kind of expression that will evoke an emotional reaction—usually a happy
one—from the viewer of the image.
TheMona Lisais a great example of the perfect smile. Find a copy on
the Internet, print it, and tack it up on the wall. Cover the bottom half
with your hands or a piece of paper then walk 180-degrees around
it while studying her eyes. Do you see the smile in her eyes even
when the lips are covered? Try the same thing with one of your
own images. If the smile shows in the eyes, then it’s truly a smile.
Return to theMona Lisa.As you walk around and look at the sub-
ject, do her eyes follow you? Again, try this with one of your glam-
our photographs. Do your model’s eyes follow you? They should.
Photographers, like painters, are artists. Leonardo da Vinci painted the
Mona Lisahundreds of years ago, yet he knew how we use our eyes. He
left something to the viewer’s imagination, thus evoking our emotions.
The power of an image comes from the emotions it creates. The charis-
matic qualities of a model come out in photographs using this technique,
and photographers achieving this harmony will succeed in glamour pho-
tography. This is much more important than preoccupying yourself with
a model’s clothes or what part of her body is showing or not showing;
until you have learned to create a smile properly, your images won’t evoke
emotions and be truly powerful.
That said, a smile only happens for a second, so you must also master
your shooting skills and be ready to release the shutter at just the right
moment. It takes a lot of practice to achieve this goal, but eventually you’ll
be able to elicit and capture perfect smiles without even thinking about it.
This is an important achievement in glamour photography—and with dig-
ital cameras, you can see it right away on your LCD screen. This is instant
gratification for both you and the subject, so use this to reinforce your
rapport. As you become a more experienced photographer, the process
will start to come naturally and you’ll know instinctively when you have
the shot “in the can.”
Lipstick.Here’s one last note on the lips. When it comes to makeup,
the last thing applied should be the lipstick. In most glamour shoots, it
should complement the clothes the model is wearing. Often lip-gloss can
also add some sparkle to match the catchlights in the model’s eyes.
The Teeth.
Are your subject’s teeth straight, white, crooked, or stained? Obviously, if
the subject insists on smiles (or just smiles all the time) and her teeth are
notpearly whites, you might want to correct this in an image-editing pro-
gram like Adobe Photoshop.
You’ll see it instantly when
the model has found that
perfect harmony.66POSINGTECHNIQUESFORGLAMOURPHOTOGRAPHY