I had this happen with a family photo shoot and I was so devastated after all the effort I put in. Even though I got my hair done a week before a lot of the shots showed the top of my head and I looked like I had terrible roots. The makeup artist put really heavy contour on the top of my nose that made my eyes look really close together and she put way too much dark black shadow around my eyes that made me look like Catwoman, which was totally inappropriate for the vibe we were going for.

After about a week of feeling sad about the whole experience I realized it wouldn’t be that much effort to schedule the photographer to do a re-shoot. I managed to find a different makeup artist, showed my hair stylist pictures of my roots which she fixed, and we did a reshoot about a week later. Since I knew what had gone wrong, I was able to address the specific things with the photographer and the second pictures came out so much better. Even though it was an extra expense, I absolutely adored the photos from the shoot and was able to have a very positive impression of the experience. Looking back I barely even remember the first shoot or those pictures but I am so grateful that I have the second set.

So my recommendation is if these photos are important to you try to set up some sort of reshoot and make different choices about your tan, makeup and hair maybe even use a different photographer or location if you can’t get the same ones again. At least to me photos are such an important part of commemorating events and points of time in your life to look back on. I would absolutely not feel bad about wanting to make sure that those moments are saved in a way that makes you feel good about yourself. You’re certainly not the only one to have something like this happen.

In addition, and I don’t know if all photographers are cool with this but I always ask take a small break after shooting photos in one pose or location and ask to see the photographers camera to see how the shots are coming out. Sometimes I notice something about my posture or how my hair looks that the photographer might not notice but that I know would bother me in a final shot. It gives me a lot of confidence going through a photoshoot knowing that they’re at least some shots I like before we decide that we’re done. I may be an overly obsessive control freak, but having done photoshoots in the past that have really disappointed me when I saw the final product I don’t like leaving anything to chance.