Ten Helpful Tips for Posing Women

Posing is a highly nuanced art that can take a lot of experience to feel comfortably proficient at. This helpful video will give you 10 tips for better poses when working with women.

Coming to you from Manny Ortiz, this video details 10 helpful tips for creating better poses for women. Coming from a dance background, posing to me is very much a game of constantly watching for any tension developing in the subject's body and creating looks that have the appearance of being effortless and natural. As Ortiz points out a few times in the video, often, the route you take to a pose is as important as the pose itself. Whereas telling a model in very methodical terms how to go directly to a pose will get you the look, the mechanical nature of calculatedly placing one's limbs and face in space and donning a precise expression is normally a recipe for tension. Instead, notice how Ortiz and his wife, Diana, move through poses very fluidly. If you watch a lot of shoots, you'll notice most professional models and photographers work this way, keeping some sort of constant movement incorporated. Check out the other tips in the video above! 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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4 Comments

Great and timely tips. Thanks!

Why is Manny shooting this video right into the sun. Can hardly see their face.

I appreciate Manny's videos and tips. They're always simple reminders or new little ideas and tricks that are achievable fairly easily!

Not to be a buzz kill, but as an amateur, I've seen this topic so many times... Personally, I think it would be more helpful to learn or get acquainted with how those "rules" could be broken (if ever). Maybe when it's appropriate to break them; again, if ever.

Again, not trying to be a dick here, just my thoughts. The advice is solid and presented well enough, absolutely! I do appreciate the write-up and share, as well.