There's no doubt about it, even if you have the best camera and lens, the correct settings, a good location, and a great model, a poorly thought out pose can ruin the image. Here is a tip for ensuring you pose your subject in a way that has you taking great images.
If you're new to portraiture and are looking at getting into it, posing is unlikely to have been at the top of your list of things to think about; it wasn't with many photographers, myself included. When you want to take portraits, you think of which camera — or moreover, which lens — and how you want the shot to look. You might scout out a location or perhaps you want to do something in the studio. This then leads to how you want to light your subject, and so on, and so forth. You bog yourself down in details so much that other than the selection process, the model isn't considered. But, something happens and this happens to most beginners: you'll run out of posing ideas mid-shoot and freeze.
This is a horrible feeling and you will likely begin to panic that you're looking amateurish. If you're lucky, an experienced model can dig you out of this situation — or even avoid it altogether for you. To avoid this having to happen, however, you need some posing basics. I have always used a Pinterest board full of hundreds of portraits and poses that I browse before shoots and that acts as a safety. That said, a good move is to have a system in place as Manny Ortiz shows in this video, breaking the model down into three sections. With this, he is able to not only create better poses, but better direct the model too.
