Posing Basics: A Guide for Couples
One of the most important things to look for in choosing the right photographer for your wedding is how they pose couples. After all, the primary reason why close to 40% of brides have regrets with their wedding photography is… poor or awkward posing! Scary huh! Whether it’s too much direction, making your images look awkward, forced, or contrived, or maybe it’s too little direction or even no direction at all, making your images lose impact or have serious flaws. Or, maybe it is even something in-between that is just lacking somehow… maybe it doesn’t naturally tie into the setting you’re in. Regardless, the importance of having a foundation in good posing techniques cannot be understated. I mean, lets face it, chances are, you and your fiancé are not professional models, so you may not know ahead of time what looks good on camera and what doesn’t. You might even find the idea of being in front of the camera to be a bit nerve-wracking, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid educating yourselves a little on posing before you step in front of the camera. After all, your wedding images will be viewed and handed down for generations to come, so lets make sure they show what an amazing, real, genuine, madly in love couple you are! When you select your photographer, make sure you love the poses the couples are in. Look at their portfolio and blog, paying close attention to how natural (or unnatural) couples look. A great photographer should be able to create beautiful images for any couple.
I hope you find this guide helpful as you plan your wedding or engagement. My primary goal in posing is to ensure you look as natural and authentic as possible in your photographs. Enjoy the guide and if you’d like to learn more about how I photograph couples, feel free to contact me as well!
Let’s face it, we’ve all seen those old, stiff photographs – maybe you’ve even been in some of those yourself, perhaps when you were a kid, stiffly arranged with the rest of your family in a super awkward way, sporting that rigid, fake-looking smile… It’s true, posing seems to have earned a bit of a negative connotation from the film years that it still can’t seem to shake off completely some 2 0years or so into the digital age when we can literally take as many images as we want. And while nowadays, it’s all about natural, un-posed, authentic moments – capturing things as they happen, it’s important to remember that just about every bride & groom portrait involves some direction, some amount of posing. But “posed” and “natural” seem contradictory, so you might ask how can something be both posed and natural at the same time? The answer, as you’ll discover, lies in supplementing a thoughtful foundation of posing with the right amount of freedom of movement. I call it organic posing because it allows couples to naturally find their own version of the pose in the process.
Here are some basic tips to practice on your own and with your partner to get a feel for what looks good in front of the camera. I’ll also talk a little bit about my own unique approach to emotive, organic posing that I use for all of my couples to ensure they look natural and gorgeous in any setting. Please keep in mind that this guide is meant to be a simple (not exhaustive) list for one very important reason: you don’t want to overthink things when you are in front of the camera! Your focus should be on staying relaxed, having fun with your fiancé, and thinking about how much you love each other. Your photographer should be able to take care of the rest for you. And I’ll say it again – that you should take extremely great care in selecting your photographer! It is the most important decision you’ll make about your wedding (second only to choosing the person you’ll marry)! We’ll go into why we feel so strongly about that in another post. For now, lets dive in to the posing!
To pose or not to pose. While just about anything can be improved with at least a little posing or direction, there are some instances that will be much more (or almost completely) freeform, with minimal direction given. Action shots – things with movement tend to fall more in this category, especially once you get the hang of things. For example, helping her navigate obstacles on a trail or (as in the image below), helping her up a large tree stump! In general, as you get farther along in your session, you will find that you are able to improvise more and more, with less and less direction, even when there is less movement. And that is really our goal – to get you to the point where you can easily go back to some of these poses (or even invent new ones!) with minimal direction given – something that will help immensely on your wedding day when there isn’t a whole lot of time.
Relax your hands. If there is any body part that can quickly show too much tension, it is the hands. Keep them relaxed! Hold each other with your hands loosely – don’t grip each other for dear life! Never grip with your fingers spread wide apart or deliberately jammed stiffly together. Allow your fingers to naturally stay loosely together by relaxing all of the muscles in your hands and fingers and gently placing them on each other.
If it bends, bend it. This mainly goes for arms, but can also apply to legs (see the next tip) and hips too. Straight, dangling arms pretty much never look good, so we’ll usually have you bending your arms as you hold your sweetie, or at the very least, have you put a hand in your pocket to give your arm a slight bend. Unless we’re incorporating a lot of movement to begin with, we’ll generally always want to have something for your hands to do so they never dangle straight down.
Put your weight on the foot farthest from the camera. This isn’t a military lineup, so lets not stand like we’re ready for dress inspection! 😉 All it takes is putting ALL of your weight on one foot – usually the one farthest from camera. The rest will all happen naturally, meaning your other leg will bend slightly, giving you a much more relaxed stance.
Focus on each other. Don’t look at the camera (unless your photographer asks you to). This is especially important if you are walking, for example. You’ll want to look at each other while walking, make her laugh, maybe lean in for a kiss… We’ll capture some with both of you smiling at the camera too, but as I’ll explain later, when you focus on each other, it allows us to more powerfully show your connection to each other and your love for each other. And we can do this in a much more dramatic, epic way. This is especially true in vast, sweeping views and large natural landscape settings. Focusing on each other and not the camera creates the very romantic sense that you are alone with each other in this beautiful space. Looking straight at the camera in those situations… well, not so much! So as a general rule, don’t look at the camera and give each other your full attention!
When kissing showing your profiles, in general, the bride’s head should tilt slightly towards the camera and the groom’s head should tilt slightly away. This is to ensure a good, flattering angle for the bride as you both tilt your heads slightly to avoid a nose collision. Depending on your relative heights, there can be some exceptions/exclusions to this. Your photographer should be able to help you find the sweet spot, so to speak.
Movement is awesome! Movement within the pose is great and helps things look even more natural. Fear not – we can always reshoot it! So try being a little bold with your movements on occasion. Plan to leap into his arms, carry her and spin around, run up a hill together, lead him through a meadow! Carry her through water, hike along a trail, or help her up a steep incline or over a log. Seriously, the possibilities are endless and I love the look of a movement in a long, flowing dress, or wind in the hair.
And don’t be afraid to come up with your own poses that showcase your personalities too! I absolutely love it when couples do this! So throw in something unexpected or even a bit silly! As your photographer, I’ll help you make sure we capture it in the most amazing way possible. If you can’t think of anything, go to my blog or portfolio and choose some poses you really like. Practice them together so that you can be sure to suggest them at your session or even add your own twist to them. This is your opportunity to let your personalities shine, so come with some ideas of your own too!
Stay relaxed and have fun! Laugh! A lot. Remember, you are in good hands. Think of how much you love each other. Feeling self-conscious? Whisper sweet nothings in her ear or look in each other’s eyes – this almost always brings a smile or laugh. As your photographer, I’ll help you both become relaxed and having fun together in no time!
