Smith - Posing for Portrait Photography

Have you ever had a client get mad at you because she looks overweight in a photographand had to wonder if she had looked in the mirror lately? I have photographed men with no more than ten hairs on the tops of their heads who were completely amazed that you could see their scalp through those sparse hairs curled around their scalps. It must be trick photography that made them look baldit couldnt be the fact they are actually bald!

Our minds work to save us from having to deal with changes caused by weight gain and age. A woman will go from a size 3 to a size 12 and think she is a little heavier but basically looks the same. Every time she sees a mirror, shell stand up straight and hold everything in. Often, it isnt until we see ourselves in pictures that reality rears its ugly, overweight, and/or balding head.

The funny part is, we all do it. When I look in the mirror, I dont see the approaching-50 me, I see the 25-year-old me. This is something that we photographers must understand to be successful. People dont come to us for reality; they come to us for a version of reality that their egos can handle. They want a view of themselves that is closer to what their minds have allowed them to seeno matter how far from reality that is.

Complicating the inherent challenge of arranging the many parts of the human form is the reality that we, as professional photographers, work with people of all different shapes and sizes. You might be able to make a perfect model look great during a test session or seminar, but if you use those same poses on a good portion of your average customer base you will end up with unsalable portraits.

This is the reason why I think its important to teach you not just how to design a pose, but also why certain posing decisions may be right for one client and wrong for another.

Have you ever learned a new pose by looking at a book or attending a seminar? Chances are, when you tried that pose out, you found that it worked for some people but not for others. This is the reason that learning posing in the traditional manner, learning an entire pose and replicating it, simply doesnt work most of the time. In this country, you photograph clients who overeat, overwork, dont exercise, and probably have partied just a little too much in their lives. Most of us wont have many of those perfect people that you see in print competitions, lectures, classes, and seminars come through our doors. How many size 2 brides have you worked with lately? I work with high school seniorsat a time in most peoples lives when they are as fit and attractive as they will ever beand only about 20 percent of them are thin enough to be successfully photographed using the entire pose posing process.

Learning the whys of posing will help you understand why this is the caseand, more importantly, to customize your poses to make these real people look their best. Learning to build poses rather than to replicate poses will enable you to address problem areas and flaws that need to be hidden or softened. Learning how to pose each part of the subject to make it look its best, then understanding how to put it all together, will help you to achieve complete poses that your clients will be thrilled to buy. I admit that building a pose