There’s seems to be a trend over the last 10 years or so to get professional family photos taken where everyone is dressed in some matching pullover or button down oxford.
I think they look stupid, lack taste, and any notion of creative style. Every time I see one of these the overwhelming impression I get is of a pack of aspiring bourgeois manque’s trying cloddishly to be stylish. These are the same people that decorate with Longaberger baskets.
What’s your opinion?
Okay, define “matching”. Do you mean the exact same top/pullover/sweater or are you including things that are maybe the same color/tone/style?
For example, would you include a family that had their picture made all wearing tones of blue, but the top styles ranged from twin sets to sweaters to button downs? Would that be “matching”?
I agree with you 100%. The Longaberger basket comment was spot on!
There are still some pictures kicking around from the days when my mom would buy a million yards of material, and make all three boys shirts, and all five girls dresses from that.
She says it was to make it easier to pick us out in a crowd; I think it was 'cause it made us all look like dorks.
As a decorating-impaired Doper I find this incomprehensible. Even after visiting the page of the Longaberger company, I’m puzzled. They’re just baskets – what’s so obviously tasteless about these? Do such people use a lot of them everywhere or something?
Some people are really into baskets. Well, baskets, and waterfowl in hats. They’re also prone to spelling “country” with a “k”. Stay away from the Longaberger.
OTOH, matching outfits can really make you focus on the faces instead of the clothing. If everyone is wearing, say, black t-shirts and khakis, then you can see the people instead of the amazingly loud Hawaiian shirt one guy is wearing. This depends on the outfits, obviously, but I do think it can serve as a way to take visual distraction out of the picture.
(Note btw that my family has never done a professional studio portrait, much less one in matching outfits. I have no dog in this fight.)
First off, I take offense at the Longaberger crack. I know what you mean, but not everyone is like that. I have several of them, and I really like them - they’re good quality and I like the way they look. I spell “country” correctly, and my house is not overrun with ducks in hats (or teddy bears, for that matter), in fact, there’s not a duck or bear in sight.
Aaaaanyway…
As for dressing alike, sometimes it’s sappy, sometimes it cute. Matching outfits or everyone wearing the same silly Rudolf sweater is eye-rollingly dumb, IMO. If everyone is just dressed ‘alike’ or in similar shirts, so there’s a certain uniformity to the picture, that’s okay (again, IMO).
My mother has friends who have 6 or 7 kids, all of whom are married with a mess of kids of their own. They take an annual Christmas picture and each ‘family’ wears matching colored t-shirts. That way you can tell who belongs together. The parents wear one color, say for example, red. Then their son John and his wife and their kids all wear blue t-shirts. Their other son and his wife and their kids all wear green. Their daughter and her husband and their kids all wear yellow. And so on. It’s just plain t-shirts with jeans, usually.
I think it’s cute.
Sure, sure. You know, I think I’m but 10 or 15 minutes away from your house. You do realize I could pop by and tell all of Doper-dom about your ceramic geese with the seasonal outfits, those horrid little dolls that stand in the corner and your oak wall-shelving with heart cut-outs, don’t you?
One of the last Christmases my grandfather was alive, we did a family picture with all 20-something of us in overalls. It was fun.
No baskets, ducks or cut-out shelving here. I will admit that one wall of my office is decorated in Columbus Cottonmouths hockey. And I have waaay too many stuffed animals for a woman with no children.
I used to work with a guy that had a set of family pictures on his desk where he, his wife and two children were all dressed in denim shirts and wheat colored pants. The pictures were set on a white sand beach with a sunset in the background.
I think they were the best family pictures that I have ever seen. (Of course it didn’t hurt that they were all good looking people.)
Uh-huh. I bet you have a doll in a crocheted dress hiding your extra roll of toilet paper.
I have always said this, and as a photographer I forbid it. It strikes me as both thoughtless and formulaic. Not to mention it reminds me of corporations I’ve worked for, where all the staff are in their crisp new matching uniforms for the “Opening Crew” pictures. Like, are these people working for Chili’s, or are they a family?
I only shoot black and white, so the problem of obnoxious colors is not an issue in my photographs, but I tell people specifically that I do not want them to match. I have general wardrobe guidelines that include no visible logos and no distracting patterns, but I’ve also broken my own rules by shooting an engagement session wherein the bride-to-be was wearing a strapless cotton dress with a large black-and-white flower pattern. She looked lovely and feminine and the pictures came out beautifully.
Far more romantically, too, in my opinion, vs. if she’d been wearing the polo shirt and jeans her fiance was wearing.
Personally, I like my subjects to look like themselves. Not like a corporate launch.
The entire point of a portrait with The Day’s Trendy Shirt is so that in 25 years we make laugh and point at ourselves.
Well, that and to say, “I can’t believe I was ever that skinny.”
I wouldn’t have minded matching uniforms for family portraits, so long as they were relatively subdued.
I grew up in the '70s, and I swear my parents made a game of picking out the most outlandish, eye-hurting clothing for me to wear in the annual studio portraits.
Typical:
Mum: White dress.
Dad: Dark suit.
Older sister #1: Solid red sweater, black skirt.
Older sister #2: Solid blue sweater, black skirt.
Older brother: Blue-and-white check sweater, black pants.
Larry: Tan pants, and an indescribable shirt. Let me try: It’s pink, mostly, and has a huge collar with a neck-to-tip length that’s longer than my face. It has thin white stripes of nested acute angles in random patchwork as a base over the pink. Then there are patches of randomly-orientated pastoral scenes, printed in dark brown and blue. Yes, blue hills and trees. Also visible: small brown and blue houses and cowboys. The whole effect is completed by shiny white buttons the size of quarters.
I look at these portraits and remember the hours of “But I don’t wanna wear it!” before the picture was taken. Everyone else got to dress as normally as was possible for the time.
Seriously, I would have given anything to be in one of those families that dresses up like Mormon missionaries for Picture Day.
:eek: OMG, those dolls that stand in the corner scare the crap out of me. They’re eeeeevil. I’m scared of clowns, and dolls are a close second. They’re always staring at you.
A woman a few blocks over has one of those big ceramic geese with lots of outfits. She changes them almost daily. I think it’s funny - as in I get a daily laugh. “Holy crap, what’s it got on today?!?”
Wanna know what I do have hanging on my walls?
Deer heads. We’re rednecks, don’tcha know. 
:eek:
I’d have to actually see it to be sure, but I swear my husband had an elementary school-age picture done in this exact same shirt!
Soooo, I’m guessing you wouldn’t go for our annual family pic with everybody wearing matching Santa hats including dogs and babies? Our shirts are different though.
No that would be fantastic! Whimsy and humor triumphs over all.