Jeff Smith. Posing Techniques for Location Portrait Photography. 2008

to crop the image at the widest part of the base, whether this is the shoulders
or (in a pose with the arms on the hips) the elbows. This fills the bottom of
the frame and gives a complete base for the composition.

Lighting.

In a pose with a larger facial size, the lighting must be flawless. The eyes must
have beautiful catchlights, and the mask of the face must be perfectly lit. This
requires you to be able to see and control the light in the scene. If you have
read any of my other books, you know that I only will use flash for full-length
poses (and then I use studio flash, never on-camera flash). No matter how
good at lighting you are, you can never really see the exact effect of the stu-
dio lighting until you print it out or magnify the image on a computer mon-
itor. Therefore, when creating head-and-shoulders poses, I always use the
natural light and modify it with reflectors, black scrims, translucent panels,
and/or mirrors. This lets me see the exact effect I am producing.

98 JEFF SMITH’S POSING TECHNIQUES FOR LOCATION PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY

The bottom of the image should provide a

base for the composition.

The eyes must have beautiful

catchlights, and the mask of the

face must be perfectly lit.