Back from a week off. I needed that break to plan out the year. Anyway, to the topic at hand; posing.
Posing is a complex skill that plays by the same rules of pretty much any other skill – the more you practice it the better you get at it. If you never practice posing, then it will forever be an uphill battle for you.
Early on two things you want to work on is:
1) Pose knowledge
2) Communication skills
For pose knowledge I advise two things. First, simply research poses online. Start with learning basic poses and looking at photos with people posing in them and then figure out why those poses work. There are compositional reasons for those poses that make them work and understanding the bigger concepts can help you come up with poses that better fit the shot you are trying to compose. Second, practice poses on your own. It is a lot easier to remember poses if you have actively practiced them yourself in front of a camera or a mirror.
Next up is communication skills. You can have all the pose knowledge that has ever existed in human history, and it means squat if you can’t communicate that knowledge to your subject. This is another skill that you sort of just have to practice and self-reflect on, making note of what worked and what went horribly wrong. Also, keep in mind that these skills will shift based on the subject. For example, a 4-year-old takes directions in a different way from a 40-year-old. The more you work with each group the better you get at communicating with each group.
All these photos were done with a two-light setup. My subject here is perfectly capable of following pose directions but since she is four turning every direction into a game or a joke worked better. I find she really enjoys doing the exact opposite of “don’t do this!” and she usually does so with delight. I also knew she’d have fun on a stool that spins and would be willing to climb a step ladder.