Posing
Solo photoshoot poses
Alone in front of a camera with no event to hide behind, the answer is always the same: keep moving and keep the hands busy.
Posing
Alone in front of a camera with no event to hide behind, the answer is always the same: keep moving and keep the hands busy.
In short: Alone in front of a camera with no event to hide behind, the answer is always the same: keep moving and keep the hands busy.
Repeated three or four times, shot in bursts.
One movement, two frames, both usable.
Grounded, relaxed, solves the hands.
Only works with weight genuinely shifted, not posed against it.
A task, and it lifts the arm away from the body.
For the quiet frames, and it removes the pressure of eye contact.
Start with walking towards the lens — the first two minutes are warm-up and the first pose should be the one that asks least of anyone. Move to turn away, look back and seated on steps, elbows on knees once the shoulders have dropped, and keep looking away, chin forward 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.
Standing still facing the lens for a whole set. Even with perfect light, twenty frames of the same static position produce one usable photograph.
Booking an hour and spending twenty minutes deciding what to wear. Bringing six outfits. And judging the set the same evening — everyone hates their own photographs on the first pass, and the second pass a week later is the honest one.