your clients subscribe to—Cosmo, Elle,etc. Look at the images in the articles,
as well as the images in the advertising. Many of your clients want to look just
like that.
In glamorous head and shoulders posing, you are basically framing the face
with the hands, arms, and even the body. A simple head and shoulders pose can
quickly be given a more glamorous look by raising the shoulder closer to the
chin. Because my clients will be giving their images to many different people,
it’s helpful to be able to make this very easy conversion from a resting pose to
a glamorous pose without moving anything but the arms and the head. And
here’s another good tip: when the head is reclined (onto a pillow, the arms,
etc.), it gives the portrait a more alluring look.
When creating a more glamorous pose, the arms, hands, and parts of the
body not only frame the face, they also create interesting lines within the frame
and help determine how to crop the image. As noted previously, in head and
shoulders portraits, the head needs a base and the image should be cropped so
that the bottom edge of the frame is at the largest point of the base (see page
66 for more on this). This can be where arms are the most flaired away from the
body or where the shoulders fill out the frame—but showing too much in glam-
orous posing, going beyond the widest part of the base, is just as distracting as
having no base at all. In the extreme close-ups, the base becomes even more im-
portant; without a base, you create a “floating head” look.When the head is reclined, it gives the por-
trait a more alluring look.