Are you passionate about photography and would love to improve your posing skills? Whether scoring the perfect headshot or capturing magical moments, accurate and well-executed posing can help take any photo from good to great! Here are five essential tips that will help you make sure all of your poses look natural and effortless.
Breath
Most models forget to breathe when they are having their photos taken. It is stressful, and they might need to be used to the place or person. But breathing is essential! When a person breathes deeply, their body gets more oxygen. It helps them relax and open up their posture. Women need to breathe deeply because they tend to breathe more with their chests. Shots were taken when inhaling, and exhaling can look very different.
Jaw
The semantic center of any portrait is the face. Tension and stiffness can make the eyes and jaw look bad. Models sometimes squeeze their jaws at the beginning of a shoot. It makes their faces look angry. You only need to ask them to open their mouths slightly. A slightly open mouth looks good in female portraits.
Back
Posture is one of the essential things in a portrait. Just like a person who forgets to breathe, a crooked, stooping person cannot somehow evoke rainbow emotions. Ask the model not to slouch and keep her back as straight as possible. There is even such a technique: ask the model to imagine that a thread is tied to the head and someone is pulling this thread up. If a person’s fantasy is good enough, his posture will immediately straighten out, and he will be ready for a photo shoot.
Eyes
You need to set the context to make the eyes look calmer and more thoughtful. To do this, talk with the model frequently, so she gets used to you and the environment. You can ask her different questions or ask her to think about something. At the moment of deep reflection, a person usually looks into himself. The look becomes defocused and deep. Or, you can ask her to focus somewhere behind the photographer, only slightly shifting her gaze from the lens – then the look will be purposeful, piercing.
Movement
It is difficult for people to concentrate on two things simultaneously. It is why it is harder for models to take unnatural tense poses when moving around during a photo shoot. It is easier for them to relax their muscles and look natural when they move, even if it is just a tiny movement like shifting their weight from one leg to another or turning their head.
