Posing
Night photoshoot poses
Faces need to be near a light source, so night posing is mostly about placement rather than shapes.
Posing
Faces need to be near a light source, so night posing is mostly about placement rather than shapes.
In short: Faces need to be near a light source, so night posing is mostly about placement rather than shapes.
The whole pose is the position — light does the rest.
Motion frozen hard, background dropping to black.
Neon, signage or a doorway. Light comes from the side and the wall gives the body a line.
Catches light on one side of the face and leaves the other dark — the most flattering split there is after dark.
City lights behind, subject lit by whatever is nearest.
For long exposures: hold two seconds, let the traffic streak.
Start with standing a metre from a lit window — the first two minutes are warm-up and the first pose should be the one that asks least of anyone. Move to walking towards the flash and leaning against a lit wall once the shoulders have dropped, and keep still, while everything else moves for the end, when self-consciousness has gone. Shoot each one in bursts through the movement rather than holding it: the usable frames sit between the instructions, not on them.
Two metres back with the lens zoomed rather than close and wide — distance is what keeps facial proportions natural. Camera at or slightly above eye level for portraits, at chest height for full length. Below eye level enlarges whatever is nearest the lens, which is rarely what you want in frame.
Anything more than two metres from a light source. And using a phone torch held by someone standing next to the camera — it produces the same flat, unflattering light as an on-camera flash without any of the character.
Raising ISO but leaving the shutter at 1/30, which produces clean, blurred frames. Bouncing flash off a ceiling that is four storeys up — outdoors there is nothing to bounce off. And mixing flash frames with available-light frames in one set, so the gallery has no coherent look.