tanya zaleski photocreations blog: Springy stylings - Montreal's South Shore family photographer

Saw a groundhog yesterday. Truth. As I drove down the fairly busy street, I saw him prepping to cross. And since I brake for animals, my headlights and his eyeballs had a bit of a moment. He hurried off from whence he came. From my rear view mirror, I saw him make it by on his second try. And I smiled to myself. Not just because the cute little fur-ball survived his adventure, but because he announced spring to me.

Spring.

{Moment of sweet silence and deep breaths.}

Spring is also when I get going on family photo sessions again. Because who wants an indoor session when you can have an outdoor one, I ask you?

Here's a little help on how to prep your wardrobe for the coming spring family session you've scheduled for, or for any family session, really.

It is usually easiest to start with your inspiration piece. Here we start with a sweater for mom to wear, but it could be a plaid shirt from daddy's closet, or a floral skirt from the little one's. Anything with fun colours to pull on.

Clothing designers use a palette to design a piece of clothing. These are the Cole's Notes (or Cliff's Notes, for my US readers) for styling your session. Set out your palette simply by extracting the colours from the inspiration piece.

If your palette is a little on the feminine side, add an item of clothing (if at all possible, into the same outfit) in a colour choice a man would easily pull off.

There's your colour palette. Turquoise, coral, lemon, and navy.

If you opt out of starting with an inspiration piece, you will need to develop a colour palette on your own. Pinterest is a great place to go for help with this.

Now you work out everyone's outfits. Don't worry too much about staying exactly in the right tone or shade of a particular colour. The more slight variations there are, the more of a natural (read "thrown together effortlessly") look it will all have.

Here's a mock-up of what that colour palette could yield for the whole fam. All the clothes shown below are from Forever21 and Zara. But I recommend you start in your own closets and move out from there (unless you were just looking for a good excuse to go shopping, of course).