Should you have an indoor or an outdoor photoshoot?

Introduction

This is a tricky question to answer, as there are so many choices of location where you might have your photoshoot:

• outdoors, in a natural rural location,
• outdoors, in an artificial urban setting,
• indoors, in your home,
• indoors, in a studio,
• or indoors in some other venue.

There’s no ‘right answer’ to this question, as so much of it depends on ‘the look’ you’re after, the rooms in which you want to display the photos, as well as your personal preference.

But here are some of the things you might want to consider to help you answer that question…

Your preference

• do you already have a strong preference, but some other reason is making you doubt taking that option?
• if so, we’d suggest going with your gut instinct and taking your preferred option – a great photoshoot is so much more about how comfortable you feel than the location you choose.

Weather

• this is always a big question – and ‘sunshine’ isn’t always the best answer,
• the big ‘weather’ consideration is “will you be comfortable for the duration of the photoshoot?”
  you’ll no doubt be thinking ‘rain’ and ‘cold’ are the biggest issues – you’d be right, they definitely are,
• however, you’ll be just as uncomfortable wearing makeup on a ‘melting’ hot July day while squinting in the bright sunshine,
• none of these issues are things we can’t solve with shelter or shade, depending on the weather, but if you’re after an outdoor photoshoot, these are the things we should chat about beforehand.

Who is taking part

• restless young children – if it’s not cold or wet, and they’re mobile, then rural outdoor locations work best, so they also have the chance to run off some energy,
• families where the children don’t get tired from spending an hour on their feet – outdoors works well (but indoors at home, or in the studio, can also be just as good),
• elderly people, or those who are less mobile – at home or in a studio are best, to avoid the standing around that’s inevitable at an outdoor location.

Time of day

The one thing we need for great photos is beautiful light for your lovely faces. This becomes much more of an issue outdoors, so we’ve created two more detailed posts to help you work out:

• the Earliest start times for an outdoor photoshoot
• and the Latest start times for an outdoor photoshoot.

Style

You probably already have a good idea of what style you’d like – a lot of this will depend on where you want to display your artwork, but it might be one or more of these:

• a contemporary white background – this is best done indoors at home, or in a studio,
• darker black background – this is also best done indoors at home, or in a studio,
• natural green backgrounds – outdoor, rural locations,
• urban backgrounds – ideally outdoors,
• super informal style – either indoors at home, or outdoors at a rural location. 

More information

Alternatively, we’ve got some more location advice that you might find useful:

• Should we have a photoshoot in a rural location?
• Should we have a photoshoot in an urban location?
• Which indoor location should I choose for our photoshoot?

Otherwise you might find our urban gallery, our rural gallery, or our indoor gallery useful to see the types of photos we’ve created in these locations.