Halloween is passed, but one last one post regarding Halloween to get a few more tips out. First off, I always recommend trying at least one costume photo session. It doesn’t have to be a carefully planned out and carefully put together costume, the exercise is the point. Trust me, you will get some ideas from doing such a session that will carry over into your other sessions.
Here my subject has a costume on (Cruella). Right off the bat there are three things that came to my mind – Cruella is a villain, my subject has a dress, and my subject has a pearl necklace. All three of those topics offer posing options and posing options make for more interesting photos and a better photo session. We started off with a standard pose and worked from there.
After the first set of poses I told her to laugh like a villain. This threw her off at first, but I demonstrated (never ask your models to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself) with an over-the-top villain laugh making sure she saw my hands and arms out. Then she went for it and those shots turned out great. From there we added in touching and grabbing her pearl necklace while laughing.
When it comes to jewlery, glasses, hair, or essentially anything around the face, just think what people do when they have those things. Your every day regular person touches their face too much and if they have anything near or on the face, they will touch those items as well. So just think about that, think about how people might touch those items, and work from there – you will come up with something that makes sense. Then we moved on to her clothing. We had her twirl, because she had a dress that can twirl, and it looked great. When having a subject twirl in a dress remember to tell them to look at the camera as they do the twirl and try to time your shot carefully. She also did a shot or two adjusting her gloves.
So, if you are looking for poses take a second and see what your subject has on. They have more poses on them then you realize. One final note: white clothing bounces light. Keep that in mind when you add white articles of clothing, especially in a speedlight/strobe situation.