desired look or style. As we discussed in the previous chapters, the
posing of the body must be coordinated with the clothing, and to
effectively pose the face you must consider the style of lighting.
In posing the arms and shoulders, your posing must not only
make the person look their best and achieve the desired look, but
both the arms and shoulders must be placed to enhance the compo-
sition of the portrait. As important as it is to position the arms away
from the body to define the waistline, it is equally important to do
what I call “finishing off the frame.”
Triangular Composition.
“Finishing off the frame” is a phrase I use when I am trying to teach
composition to young yearbook photographers. After they start to
understand the basics of posing (and the six deadly sins), I show
them how to finish off the bottom of the frame.
In a yearbook pose, the composition of a portrait looks finished
if the shoulders fill the bottom of the frame from one side to the
52 POSING FOR PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
A composition looks finished when the head is at the peak of a triangle formed by the shoul-
ders and the rest of the body.