Jeff Smith. Posing Techniques for Location Portrait Photography. 2008

logs, rocks, fallen trees, and other man-made sitting areas. If your location
doesn’t provide any natural or man-made places to pose your clients, you can
even bring them with you—natural-looking stools or chairs made of canes or
branches, or even some light-weight fake rocks or logs can do the job. Per-
sonally, I prefer not to haul a bunch of stuff with me to outdoor shoots, so I
tend to look for natural places for my clients to sit.

Common Problem Areas.

Hips and Thighs.Once you find a seating area, there are two important
rules that you must always remember. Before I tell you, though, I want to
show you the first one.
I want you to put this book down. If you are sitting, stand up. Now, sit
back down and watch your thighs and hips (if you’re wearing a skirt or dress,
you may have to tuck the material tightly around your legs to see this). If
you are being honest, your legs and hips will grow in width anywhere be-
tween 25 and 60 percent depending on your muscle tone. I don’t care how
much time you spend in the gym, youwillwiden out. So that’s our first rule:
never sit someone down flat on their bottom.
While you are still seated, roll over onto your hip—the one that would be
closer to the camera. Notice how much slimmer your legs appear? Your bot-

78 JEFF SMITH’S POSING TECHNIQUES FOR LOCATION PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY

LEFT—Pulling the subject’s arm across their

waist will help cover this area in seated

poses.RIGHT—Having the subject sit up very

straight helps smooth the stomach area in

seated poses.

I prefer not to haul a bunch of

stuff to outdoor shoots, so I tend

to look for natural seating.