People always tell me that there is something in my portraits that makes them look very ‘me’. That makes a lot of sense, because photographers don’t just capture anything that happens to be; they capture things they think are decent representations of beauty.
So it follows that you will need to figure out what is BEAUTY in YOUR eyes, in order to find YOUR photography style.
This is a very interesting topic I think about all the time. In a series of upcoming posts, I am going to suggest a few key things that I pay attention to that helped me develop my distinct mark in shooting portraits.
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And the theme for today is —
Posing your model
Why this is important
Let’s do a quick experiment together. Now pick up your phone, and go to a portraiture hashtag on Instagram; or your explore page, if Instagram suggests a lot of portraits to you.
Flick through the feed and observe - what are you thinking when you first see a portrait?
Answers might deviate slightly but generally, you are figuring out WHAT IS THE MODEL DOING. This is why you are quick to notice poses that look awkward to you, and ones that look so chic that you just need to hit the save button.
By the same token, what you make your models do in your portraits is very likely the first thing your readers notice about your portfolio.
And this is why posing is something every (portrait) photographer must think through for themselves - you are in charge of your personal brand.
How I pose my models
When I started out, I certainly wished that some magical person would just turn up and walk me through their photography style. This is EXACTLY what I am going to do here - I was in your shoes not so long ago.
I can’t speak for other photographers, so let’s take my profile as an example.
I love creating portraits that express an attitude in the model which conveys a sense of power; yet that power is not outright a strong vibe (like swag, for instance).
So in essence, subtle (feminine) power is my theme.
This power can be created in many ways. But these poses share a common narrative - in every grid the model seems to be ‘showing off’ something to you. Some usual poses include power poses that exhibit confidence and passion.
How to find your poses (and photography style)
Alright, so I told you mine, and it is now time for you to find yours!
I read minds pretty well so by now you are probably thinking, ‘how?’; so the following are some of my thought processes:
Read heaps of work and categorise
There are infinitely many poses. To make things easier for yourself as a beginner photographer, dumb down all the poses in the world into a few simplified types. For instance, I grossly grouped portraits that I read into moody, sexy, and minimalist.
This helps because it provides some structure in your research.
Eliminate what you don’t like
Now that you have developed your own way of perceiving these poses, naturally, some groups speak to you better than the others. For instance, I am not particularly into sexy poses; I also vibe less with portraits in which the model is simply standing still (well unless the styling is sick).
If you get stuck in finding what you like, identifying things that you don’t like can be surprisingly helpful.
Save what you like into an Instagram collection
Create a collection called ‘poses’ (or whatever you want to call it), dedicated ONLY to poses that you love. Don’t just create a collection for portraits in general and put everything into one large pile. You find portraits beautiful for many reasons - posing is just one of them.
When in need for inspiration, you will be able to flick through the posing collection and recall exactly why the photo got collected - because of the pose, not the styling, not the color grading, not the location etc.
Summary
In this article, we talked about:
Your photography style can be largely determined by your model’s posing.
How I pose my models to convey the theme of subtle power, and
What you can do to develop your own set of poses - read more work, eliminate what doesn’t work, and note down what works.
More sharing coming soon!
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Keep shooting, keep creating!
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