The other day I saw an ad for a posing guide. You know, it lists different ways photographers should have your subject stand, place their hands just so, and the right angle for them to have their head. It got me thinking about how using a posing guide will ruin your portrait photography.
Now I get the idea of a posing guide–that is, that you want to flatter your subject, and there are certain ways to shape their body that is more flattering than others. I get that, and in theory, it’s smart. But there are at least two problems with those guides. First, all your pictures will start to look the exact same from person to person and what’s worse, they’ll start to look exactly like the dude that sold you the posing guide.
For me, I want to make a portrait that suggests something about the person I’m photographing. The key to making pictures like that is to pay attention to gestures and expressions. There’s some nuance with that method, so being observant and picking up on subtle details is a good skill to develop. When I’m working, I want to let my subjects sit or stand they way they normally would whether I was there or not. If that happens, then a little bit of that person is revealed in the pictures I take. And that’s the other problem with a posing guide. You start paying attention to whether or not their arm is how you remembered it from a picture that someone else said your pictures should look like, instead of paying attention to what the person’s body language is revealing to you.
Learning a handful of standard poses is the easy way. It’s the factory versus hand-crafted. Trying to make something surprising and unique to each subject is the hard way, but for my money, the road to making portraits that are memorable and meaningful. You think Irving Penn ever bought a posing guide?
Salvador Dalí portrait by Irving Penn
So that’s my approach. If you have a different opinion, feel free to share it.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
