Posing for Portrait Photography

young photographers get the head when they re-pose it after the

client’s face is turned.

The only time the head needs to be repositioned is when the

client is extremely nervous. Then you will find that the top of

the head slowly starts tilting toward the higher shoulder. Pho-

tographers fresh from photography school think this is a good thing,

but it is not. The head naturally tilts toward the higher shoulder

because the client feels awkward and uneasy. Their body is trying to

tell you something. Think about it—if people tend to pose this way

because they feel awkward or nervous, then why on earth would you

pose someone this way on purpose?! We will discuss the tilt further in

chapter 3.

There you have it. If you make sure that each pose doesn’t

include the six deadly sins, you will have salable photographs. The

trick is reminding yourself to check every pose before you take the

first image. Once you start recognizing what not to do, you can start

to learn what you should do. For our young photographers, learn-

ing posing in this backwards manner seems odd, but it gets them

into the game quickly, rather than making them struggle for years.

SIX THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER DO 23

By making sure that your image doesn’t
include one of the six deadly sins of posing,
you can ensure that you are creating a sal-
able photograph.