cgardner
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In trying to teach various aspects of photography over the past few years I've come to realize the limited value to beginners of following examples of poses or lighting patterns because often the models in the examples have faces or bodies with are the ideal types (slim and symmetrical faces and bodies) rather than those of average people.
I suggest reversing the process, starting with the realization that with pose and lighting in a photo the fundamental goal is to evoke an emotional response to the facial expression and body language of the subject. We subconsciously react to body language signals constantly when encountering people in person or seeing them in a photo, but curiously on a conscious thinking level we don't consider why they work. A less "rules" bound way to approach the problem of posing people is simply to understand how to consciously interpret body language signal.
A New Jersey portrait photographer named Joe Zeltsman started thinking along those lines in the 1960s. He went back to the classic forms in Greek sculpture and reverse engineered why they evoked particular responses. He realized the use of precise facial angles resulted in a more balanced and flattering rendering of the human head and face, and that poses, in the broadest sense, could be categorized as "masculine" or "feminine". A more politically correct categorization would be "aggressive" or "passive".
When confronting someone an attacker will typically square off and dig-in and lean forward with weight balanced evenly on both feet. Someone wishing to avoid confrontation will instinctively turn sideways, minimizing their profile, and shift weight away from the perceived threat. So rather than trying to memorize 101 different aggressive or passive poses on flash cards you can start with a conceptual understanding of what emotions postures in photos will likely evoke, and build the pose based around the goal of what emotional message you want to resonate in the mind of the viewer after seeing the image.
Zeltman also made the logical but brilliant observation than standing poses start by placing the feet on the ground, and how the feet are placed and weight is shifted from one foot or the other will create a chain reaction reflected in the hip, spine and shoulder angles. Read his words of wisdom at: http://jzportraits.home.att.net/ The photo examples are are dated, but the observations quite insightful and timeless.
Go stand in front of a full-length mirror square and flat-footed. Next turn your body to the mirror at a 45 degree angle with the front foot pointing at the mirror and the one in back turned sideways. Now shift all your weight to the back foot and hip to the point you can lift the heal of your front foot off the ground. What will happen when the weight is shifted on the feet is that the front hip and shoulder will rise and the back shoulder will drop creating a receding (i.e. passive) shoulder line. Observe how the angle and tilt of the head to the shoulder line changes the body language. Try the same thing, but with the weight shifted to the front foot instead. The shoulder line will change from receding back to leaning forward, a more aggressive posture. When the head its turned and tilted to the near shoulder the body language will appear more passive than when the head is kept vertical/squared-off relative to the shoulders. Each of the different postures should evoke a different emotional reaction. Since we are social creatures exposed to cultural stereotypes its likely the basic subconscious emotional reactions you have to body language will be similar to those of your audience.
Something you need to keep in mind when composing portraits with artificial flash s even exposure. Many of the ways of posing men and women in studio portraits have become conventions because they both flatter the form of the person and ensure that the face is as close or closer to the key light than any other body. With flash exposure is only correct at one distance from the light. That means a pose which places a shoulder nearer to the light than the face will be overexposed if the face is exposed perfectly. If exposure is cut back to avoid blowing the shoulder then the face will become underexposed. The only solution to that flash exposure dilemma is to alter the pose so the face is closer to the key light, or face and shoulder are an equal distance. The basic "masculine" and "feminine" postures taught by Zeltsman both interpret stereotypical body language and ensure correct even exposure over the face and shoulders:
http://super.nova.org/TP/Posing.jpg
Note I am referring to the posture, not the content. If you were to put a 6 year-old, 18 year-old, and 80 year-old female in the exact same pose, be it demure and vampy and sexy, each would likely evoke a different emotional reaction. That reveals another important aspect of body language: context. Whether or not the signals sent with the body language match the context of the age, gender and action of the person has a great deal to do with how clearly the intended message in a photo is perceived. Why did Shania Twain create such a stir in country music a few years back? Her trademark posture was squared-off, legs-wide spread combination of aggression and sexual overtones with ran counter to the prevailing image of female country western performers. If Madonna used the same posture in a concert it would hardly be noticed. Why? Context.
I recall one instance where a mother learning portraiture took a photo of her 16 year-old daughter from 4 ft away with a low camera angle which emphasized her ample bust line. It had guys falling all over their tongues telling Mom what a great glamor shot it was, which confused her because she was actually trying to make a conventional portrait featuring the girl's face. Mom just didn't have a clue how the viewer would react to the body language signals of the clothing and pose which emphasized the chest and minimized the face. So its also important to keep in mind the role camera height and near/far perspective can have on the perception of posture and body language in the photo. One of the more powerful tools a photographer has in the box is the ability to distort normal (i.e. as seen by eye) perspective by changing the point of view of the camera.
Once you get in-tune on a conscious level with your own reaction to images and understand the bio-mechanics of the Zeltman "feet-up" posing method it is possible to look at any image and reconstruct it in from of a mirror starting by placing the feet in the same position and shifting the weight between them the same way. The hips and shoulders will react in predictable ways. You should then be able to categorize why, in-terms of leg position, hip /shoulder/head angles the photo cause you to have the emotional reaction you did.
I've found the mirror reconstruction exercise very helpful on several levels. In addition to helping me understand ho the pose is created it gives me a clue whether or not its one that is natural, or contrived for the subject to hold. In some cases its necessary for the model to do things which feel unnatural to obtain the desired look in a photo. Natural instinct is for a person to keep their head upright with eyes horizontal, but that is rarely how you'd want the eye line in the photo: the photo will look more dynamic if the eye line is tilted in the opposite direction as the shoulder line and more static and centered if tilted in the same direction as the shoulders (perpendicular to the shoulder line). Knowing how a pose is "engineered" in the bio-mechanical sense of the shin bone being connected the hip bone, etc. and how it feels makes it easier to provide clear verbal instructions to the model. For example I pose a small or large in less than a minute with a few verbal commands:
Everyone turn and face towards the center at a slight angle
Point your front foot at me (standing on a ladder with the camera)
Shift your weight to your back foot until you can lift your front heal off the ground slightly. (angles all the shoulder lines and tilts all the heads to the center).
Look up at the camera...
Now but your inside hand back on your hip so the guy behind you doesn't steal your wallet (gets rid of "fig leaf" poses and one potentially distracting hand and gets everyone to smile).
The net result is an very cohesive yet relaxed look in the group shot with a minimum of distractions.
What you will find if you reverse engineer shots of professional models and try to recreate them in front of a mirror is that the poses don't just naturally fall into place with a simple shift of the hips (i.e. the starting baseline of the learning curve) as with average people. The difference between models and ordinary people is their acquired skill of controlling the various planes of their bodies independently to create various body language signals or to compensate for the the point of view of the camera.
For example low camera angles are quite common in fashion and glamor and a model will compensate for a low angle by either tipping the chin down or tilting the entire upper torso forward to keep the front plane of the face the same angle as the upwards tilt of the camera. The body will exhibit the effects of the camera perspective but the face position relative to the camera will wind up with the same slightly above tip of nose level position relative to the face which is necessary to hide the nose holes.
If you don't work with professional models then you'd need to understand that type of relationship between camera height and near/far perspective and be able to coach the subject. Keeping face, feet and knees all the same distance from the camera in a low shot will prevent the size of the feet from being exaggerated and tilting the chin down or leaning forward unnaturally is necessary when the camera is below the face to make the image as recorded by the camera look normal and flattering.
http://super.nova.org/TP/ShootUp.jpg
I used that strategy when taking this photo of my wife a few years ago while at a tourist park in Manila. I saw the big tree and was reminded of Adams photo of Edward Weston. But because the tree was on a hill I had to shoot from about 15 below her eye level. I used the max. zoom on my 2.1 MP Kodak DC290 and had her lean forward at the waist so her chin was out over her knees to eliminate the near/far distortion which would have occurred in a closer wide-angle shot. But in the photo she appears to be sitting upright because her upper body was tilted forward at the same angle as the camera was tilting up:
http://super.nova.org/TP/P881BW.jpg
What I am suggesting by example is that you learn to think and solve your posing problems not by rote imitation of posing guides by interactively starting with the goal of the emotional reaction you want the photo to have. The flash cards are certainly useful as a source of posing ideas, but recreating what you see will require an understanding of the underlying concepts and cause and effect discussed above.
Chuck
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