a smile on your face, speak with energy and excitement in your
voice. When you want a relaxed expression, soften your voice. In
this way, you are in control of every client’s expression. Understand
the expression your client wants, then take control and make sure
that you take the majority of poses with that expression.
Although many of these rules are basic for some photographers,
we have to start somewhere. Posing is a study of the human form
that never ends, because it is a study that is always changing. From
my experience, the photographers that have the hardest time with
creating posing that meets clients’ expectations are the young pho-
tographers and the older, “well seasoned” photographers. Both tend
to pose a client to meet their own expectations and not the client’s.
If you pose clients in this way, they will never be as happy as they
could be, and you will never profit as much as you could by learn-
ing to pose for the client and not yourself.
The Tilt of the Head. An Additional Factor:
The tilt of the head isn’t listed under the six deadly sins, because 90
percent of the time when you have the client turn their head toward
the main light, the angle of the head will be close to the correct posi-
tion. Typically, the client’s head is in a comfortable position at this
point, and much closer to the correct position than I have seen my
22 POSING FOR PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
When you want a smile on the subject’s face,
you should smile and speak in an upbeat
voice (left). When you want a more serious
expression, use a more subdued voice and
don’t smile (right).