Posing for Portrait Photography

hard to get past. It’s important to understand that classic posing
theories came from a different place and a much different time.
Let’s take women for example. In the era that inspired much of
our posing theories of today, women were expected to be passive
and submissive. It was a man’s world, and men allowed women to
live in it so they could have babies and tend to the house. Look
around. Do you see any passive, submissive women around today?
(And you want “tended to?” Just leave the toilet seat up once and
she’ll give you “tended to!”) The point is, that the passive posing of
women that was all the rage hundreds of years ago, doesn’t really
apply to the women of today.
Women want to look like women, of course, but they don’t want
to look like docile creatures without a thought in their head. I
always have this fight with my young photographers (fresh from the
local college photography program) about the tilt of the head. They
insist that the head of a woman must be tilted in toward the higher

8 POSING FOR PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY

Ideas about posing both men and women

have changed since the era that inspired the

“rules” of posing.

In the era that inspired much of

our posing theories of today,

women were expected to be

passive and submissive.