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Posing Manual

So we do have real babies coming today, but I wanted to do a couple of things with my fake baby so this's my fake baby. So we're looking for a name for my fake baby today, okay? This is where I want to go with today. I believe every photographer's should have the ultimate folio for the air brand. And I believe that if you have the ultimate folio, you can market yourself brand yourself and you can pretty much make money is a photographer. So the ultimate value to me is going to attract the client that you want and really cross is many sort of marketing points as you can. I believe you don't tell people what you do, you show them what you do. And so today I really want you to create this ultimate family folio, which will just bring you a lot of work. So I've seen in a portrait studio for about twenty four years and portrait's family portrait have always been the biggest money maker in my studio, and they seem to make more money or the same amount of money is winning studios, but with a h...

igher profit because they have a smaller range in terms of, you know, how quickly out to do in process, so I photograph thousands of families over the years, and like I said, even though I advertise myself as a glamour photographer, I still photograph families, and so today, it's really just about making mom look incredible and then putting a whole lot of different babies into the shoots with us so that we can show you how it's done. So I started to do this if you would have booked me as a family portrait, the first thing I'm can you help my baby, I kind of need to move my arm. I'm I'm a little ivan already not a lie. We need a nanny. Uh, so to me, if I was to be photographing a baby today, the first thing I'm gonna do it prepare for my shoot is sit down and draw maybe five or six poses. I'm going to tell them to bring in two or three outfits it's not like a glam issued I wouldn't do for two, six outfits I'm going to maybe do two to three, so what I'm really going to focus on is just sitting down in my here, and this is how I draw my studio poses like I get a pin there's a program I use on my ipad now cord on paper, and you just get a stylist. And you can draw and you can put little water color features in I also do it on the head and then keep them with me in the studio now it's really odd I've been doing this so many years as you know if you've seen any of my other portrait work, I have been doing it for a long time and what I normally do is I have these in front of my clients because my client's really love these so they look at this and they instantly get a visual off what's gonna happen for them but it's not a photograph because if I show them a photograph of somebody else then it's kind of like I don't look like that or what if you know what you showing a forty five year old client, a twenty two year old photograph and they're like, well, I'm not that you know and you make them feel better about themselves, so I just love this idea that you could drop your manual so I put a few of these on facebook and everyone can we have them? We have them so yes, you can have them so what we thought would be better is if I draw a shoot and then go and shoot it, then you can print out this picture and then what you can do is print out the pictures I take around this pose so you have both the image and the drawing, and so I worked around seven beith poses and with all the families that are coming in today, they're different ages and the babies are all different ages that significantly changes the pose because of kelly was to put a new born into this pose it's going to be very different than when we put a eight month old baby in this pose. So we're going to show you both so that you can see the difference and they were gonna work around the structure of this, so we've got outstanding additional tze and then we've got out sitting traditionals, and then we've got our ottoman and our floor shots, okay? And then we're going tio go to like an artistic silhouette skin shot, you know? We take dead, shoot off and mom can optional, you know, I'm going to go through all of that, and then we're going to go down to an aerial shot down on the ground, so we cover those release even really basic poses, so as I started to draw out, the cve imposes eyesight right now, you know what I'm like I'm like, okay, now, how can I expand on that? So then I thought to myself, well, I've gotta teach you guys, I always teach how to post curvy women because everybody needs to be slimmed down unless you're very very slim, in which case you can shoot up on people in it's fine, but not many people have that, so I'm going to teach you about curves and then ever started to look at all my curves, posing about the chin, the shoulder I just recreated the rules toe add a baby in there because I thought to myself, just because you're holding a baby doesn't mean you can't kick out on their back foot, create that beautiful front arm and then push that chin and shoulder forward and drop the front shoulder. Those air just basic portrait roles, but normally we're doing it with an hourglass body shape that looks or sixteen gorgeous as opposed to bringing in a baby. And the irony is, can you get my baby? So I gave him my baby for, like, five minutes, and you just left her alone. She wanted through the irony, irony, wass is when I started to post with the baby and think of all the poses I could do with the baby, I realized that she was covering my body and what better way to oppose anybody with curves than to put a distraction in front of the body? They're really it drops the rules all the way down to chin, shoulders and arms, and then the connection and so what you're going to see today is a whole lot of women looking really beautiful with their babies and kelly's job to teach us how to make the baby's fit into all of these poses, but we've just got to make mom look hart, who buys the photograph, mum dead or baby? Yeah, all right, so too may I started to look at all of these and then I started to think, well, I can dip somebody's front shoulder with a baby and I can push for that chin and turn that shoulder with that baby I can bring that baby up into the body line and move her arms and the shoulder in the back of her body. I can bring her chin forward and shape your face. I think what most of us are doing his photographers is focusing on the baby now the baby essentially when you look at kelly, is either three airlines the babies either sleeping, uh, it's interacting with appearance? Look at me or we're both interacting with the camera in the photographer, so I thought to myself, other than posing the baby, which kalidas so beautifully I pose mom, she poses baby in those three interactions or what? I'm going to give us three entirely different scenarios. But as I started to do this there's an ottoman post where I can stretch mom out in lengthen her body and then I can either kill a newborn up in her arms on the ottoman or I can have a larger baby sitting so we'll do that with this many babies as we can and see how heart we can make the mum look in every one of those shots world capturing the baby exactly how we wanted every single one of these posers looked to me like they could have a baby in them so I thought, well I'm just going to show you how to do that and then as I started to tip away the body and look at the rules hiding the body was one of the best and what better way to do that then with a family? So kelly have to be my husband for a second if I'm and if I'm going to be the mom and I don't feel really good about myself right now and I want to feel really good about myself what better way even to put me between the two people that can make me look smaller and feminine and beautiful and there is the best way to pose and to use him use his masculinity used his arms to encircle them the baby too many men coming in from behind under that our bows you know, making the woman look bigger and it's the boys, they're just they veered to protect the deer to nurture. And they're there to hold. And it looks so beautiful when you learn to make them look bigger and make the girls looks smaller because we are direct opposite to photograph she's in the light haste not his arms are out who's. Aaron, you know, he's in suk ling and embracing and protecting his family in the body language around those posers are just beautiful. So as I started to see all of that, I realized that the rules are so simple when I shoot women on their own. My rules chin shoulder hands, hourglass body language connection. So I just want to take out our glass and body language because, well, actually body language no, I was going to take out the hourglass. There is no hourglass in a pregnant woman. Okay, because we take away her hourglass shape because it's de sexualizing and it becomes beautiful, but because her tummy is there in her belly is there in her hands up on the belly, which means withdrawn to look at it. Then it changes everything about those posers. But the shoulder is still connected, the eyes they're still connected, the connection is still beautiful with just changed the body language around the body. So I feel like this is going to be really exciting to show because I'm going to watch all of these women with their different babies transform we've got curves we've got everything going on but really we've got real woman that have little babies that are probably feeling very, very vulnerable and it's so wonderful to see and it's so went for you know, see if we can make them look gorgeous too may working this front shoulder and teaching people this connection is so magnificent and I can still hold a baby up in here kelly could store revenue born up into her arms and she could still be doing everything she's doing right there so then I started to think I have seven based poses now how then do I expand on those? And so this is what I came up with we have mom dead in a sleeping baby now it's very uncommon that would give a sleeping baby under four months create so I'm thinking this would definitely be their newborn pose. You know, when when baby's asleep and mom and dad had this tiny little bundle and we're shooting it callie style, but you're the basket now, you know, whereas we had this newborn wrapped up in a little nest and we had the newborn you're the basket and what bit a basket than the parents who made them to wrap their arms around this little we band also kelly's gonna teach us youngest baby today's three weeks old so they're not that real curly newborn, but they will always be comfortable in the moment, dear down. So we're going to try and get some really beautiful artistic baby newborn shots that exist in mom and dad's arms. And then as the baby gets bigger, there's not going to be a lot of sleeping babies when they're older, so they're going to be more interactive babies. So then we go mom dead in baby looking at camera so there's, lots of poses were the photographer needs to connect the man, the dead and the baby so I'm going to pose the mom and the dead connected to the camera and kelly's gonna put the baby and is many different ways as we can where's photographers. We can interact with the baby. Look at the camera, the camera, my baby's. Not very likes, bandy. Okay? And they were all looking at the camera. Sits a portrait. Okay, so this is what this imposing manual is insane. Plus a sleeping baby, newborn born juices and interactive older baby. So then we've got mama dead and connecting with love I feel like one of the most beautiful portrait you could possibly do is if your baby is sleeping, or even if your baby small and after up to the four months mac that you khun take beautiful photographs of a couple connected in a loving way with their babies in their arms. But they connected to each other is a couple and remember that when baby comes along, it's always about the baby, but these two came first and they love for each other is incredible. They made a child with love in one day. That child owns this photograph with mom and dad are kissing or laughing or looking at each other, so we're going to do lots of interact everyone's don't cry now, he's allowed to cry love is perennial, and it is so beautiful to capture and it's not just about that baby it's the togetherness is what's going to make this shot so perfect, and I really want you to go through each of these scenarios and take them off. So we're going to see in every one of the couples and families and babies today. How many of the scenarios actually fit in with the makeup with here? So if the baby's older, it crosses out three straight away, but everybody should be able to do this one. Every single time I posed out of those seven, I'm going to change the position of the dead so it mom's holding the baby first and the dead changes position that gives me an entirely new photograph, but the same pose and scenario, then I change out dead, I give dead the baby and I make mom do the same position that dead just did, because then they swapping over. So I feel like when I changed its position, I could change up to four shots instantaneously, and then I have mom alone with the baby, and then I have dead alone with the baby because both of these options are not any viable. They're big sellers that's where kelly and I always have this little joke about men taking this shit off. So both of us started to talk about it, and I said, why do you do that? When you say, you know, you've got a day and you like, would you like to do something with the shoot off? And kelly and I both started giggling on the phone, and I was like, where you laugh thing is, she goes because I go bright read when I say it, and I like you, and she said, but I really wasn't. To take his shirt off and I was laughing I get really embarrassed too, because I'm like I was saying you want to take your shoes off? Not that I'm interested but if you want to take your share but I don't it's not like I want to see you at the shoot up but it's a cool shot but you know I'm you know if you want to feel if you can feel comfortable it would be really I'm talking a lot now and I'm I like in nervous cheddar they go sure take this you'd often there are, like done done on our so so charged but it's one of those things you asking another woman's husband to take his clothes off so you can take a photo of him and it's kind of amusing and so but I noticed the girls always love it except every now and then I'll have a woman that looks at her husband it goes, don't take your shoes off and I always looked gutted like really afghanistan my shit off theo guy s o mom alone with baby is really important to me and I've got a couple of women coming in today with little babies that I want to do just some incredible mother and daughter shots mother and daughter shots because he both little girls they are two may this sort of shots that just oh, I can't wait to do them so I'm really excited I'm deadline with baby in dead with a shoot off if he wants to, um adding a toddler very big difference so there's a family coming in this morning tyler and rachel and they have a five and a half month baby that doesn't mean we gotta non brenda and so he's an interactive baby and we want to take beautiful portrait of the three of them together and they also have landed now landon's three and so he's it that sort of frenetic running three stage, so we'll let him run around us while we take those photographs and largely ignore him, you know, because we want to just quickly get these photographs of the baby and then went on when landon's really weaken join him in as a family portrait and then you build ding on all of your scenarios and then we have ed grandparent's now in terms of marketing, what happens when you add another set of people, you add another set of buyers, okay? And so what I'm giving you is a cz many scenarios as I can and options to pose that you have right in front of you that before you start you khun say I'm going to try as many of these scenarios as I can, but it gets better because I have four shooting options in one corner so I have seven base poses with nine scenarios in four shooting scenarios in one corner with a natural light window, so when you do the math, we should really be unlimited in what we can do in a, you know, four by four major space it's, very small and that's all we need. So today we have a brown portrait backdrop because it's really big confession right now, and I think they're really beautiful, I'm going to silhouette on a black, the flett, so cap down as much light as I can and so can show you somewhat artistic style black and white, you know, lower light silhouette shots, which are really beautiful I'm always going to use that white backlight because I can and I feel like it's, just wonderful and also, if you're not shooting in the studio and you're outside the bank, right is phenomenal and the white wall, white brick because it's organic and it looks fabulous and it's going to give me lots of different options, so we're going to change out a lot during the day and we're going to pose, we're going to make mom look really hard. We're going to talk about where we're going to slim here, how we're going to swim here, kelly's putting the baby and and we're going to take lots of photographs