What To Include In Your Photography Session & Style Guide

Preparing your client for the photography session can be tough. Many clients have never stepped foot in front of a professional lens. It’s your job to help them prepare with a detailed session style guide.

What Is A Photography Session Style Guide?

Your style guide is the Wikipedia of your photography business. It’s what you give to new clients to help them understand how to prepare for their session, what to wear, and what to expect. Many photographers also include a pre-session consultation to go over basic styling info and questions. Then, give their guide to help fill in the gaps. It’s incredibly helpful because there’s always something the client – or you – forgot to discuss on your call.

What To Include In Your Photography Session Style Guide

Every photographer includes different details in their session guides, but the core topics are the same. In fact, the best style guides include four main topics.

Session Style Guide Tips Include:

• A Welcome Message
• FAQs
• Seasons And Weather
• Styling Advice

You want to include everything you can think of to help your client prepare. To help you prepare for creating a great guide for your business, let’s go over some things you can say on each topic. Starting with the salutations!

A Welcome Message

Easy enough, right? Start your session style guide with a little welcome message to your new clients. The message can be the same for everyone. I like to remind them how much fun we’re going to have. Then tell them how to use the guide to prepare for their session. Remember, always, always recommend they contact you with any questions! (Otherwise, you may just end up with a jump scare when they show up to the session!)

If you offer multiple sessions, consider having separate style guides for each session you provide. That way, you can tailor the welcome message to include special sentiments about the type of session. For example, you can tell them how excited you are to meet their kiddos in a family session-style guide. Or you can talk about how the session is a warm-up for the big day in an engagement session style guide. (But it might be a bit awkward reading about kiddos to a newly engaged couple who aren’t in that stage yet!) Doing so increases the personalized feel of your guide.

FAQs

They’re going to have ‘em! Your style guide is the perfect place to tackle common questions you get asked. Most clients have never done a professional photoshoot before. As the expert, it’s up to you to educate them on the Dos and Don’ts of how to prepare for their session.

The FAQ section is perfect for answering questions about what to expect, your process, and styling questions. It’s also perfect for questions clients don’t think to ask (but you wish they did). 

Things like:

• Should I bring anything extra?
• Do I need to show up in my outfit?
• Can you edit out wrinkles?

I mean, you can edit them out – but how many are too many wrinkles?! Avoid the frustrating hours of editing a million wrinkles and just add the always-unasked questions to the FAQ section.

Seasonality

Yep, this is your time to talk weather! If you don’t plan to have a a style guide for every season (you should) then you’ll want to include a section on seasons and the weather. Remind clients about things like wind, sweltering summer heat + heavy fabrics, and rain. Tell them how to prepare by doing things like bringing a brush, water, and a jacket. You can also use this as an excuse to add information about what to expect if it’s raining and their session location is outdoors. The purpose of bringing up seasons and the weather is to avoid emails and emails of questions and what-ifs as the session day approaches.

Styling Advice for Photos

Not everything that looks great in real life shows up well in photos. Loud prints, pin-stripe shirts, colors that blend in with the background…avoid them all. The styling advice section of your style guide should be the longest one. You will have to spell out everything to clients because styling for photos is a whole different world.

I recommend adding styling advice on:

• Clothing choices
• Color palettes
• Matching vs not
• Hair and makeup (if it’s not included)
• Where to shop

Remind them of your editing aesthetic and recommend colors and patterns that match well with it. Share examples of dos and don’ts so visual learners can understand. If your session is seasonal, like Fall mini sessions, then consider creating a special guide to highlight the best fall colors and sweater choices!

Make your photography style guide your own!

Truly, you can never add too much information to a photography style guide. The more information your clients have, the more likely they will feel prepared and comfortable come session day. 

If you feel overwhelmed with the idea of writing a whole styling book, check out our 3 Canva Session Style Guides. Each is designed with the season in mind. Not only do we include all the sections above, but we’ve written it for you! Just pop your photos in, choose the colors you want clients to wear, and you’re done!