Lessons

Lesson Info

Sue's Posing Rules

I want to teach you how I do this so I have rules and these are the rules it's chin shoulder hands hourglass body language asymmetry connection these air suze rules and it's really really important that now that you understand my roles that you'll start looking through my photographs and you'll start seeing that my rules are consistently a ll the way through so I'm going to teach them to you right now the chin a lot of photographers teach the chin what to do with the chin so I really need you to many you might need to move you need to see me a lot of people need to understand what's going on with the chin movement and the chin movement is about pushing it forward and down okay so all of you girls that were photographed by me for two days how many times did you hear me say chen ford and down how many times a million chin fording down pushing a chin towards mei chen fording down pushing it in towards may write constantly it is constant I must set a thousand times in the shit so what I'm ...

doing here is I'm elongating the nick and I'm pushing the chin forward and down now a lot of people teach people to put the chin ford and up high like this okay two things that doesn't work one is there's no definition in the chin line here and we have small eyes when the chin comes forward and down you not only have really good definition through the chin line you have big eyes to the camera so so mina I'm gonna use you as a model so what I really need teo put forward this weekend is your kind of hear me say this a thousand times chin fording down chin fordham down chin fourteen down so if I bring some minor in the most amazing things started the most amazing thing that most people don't get is this is called a chin pan okay you hold your hand out like this everybody do it tim pain I don't get it and it's not like this it's flat ok and for some reason everybody knows this say I want you to only make your chin okay this cottage in pen now it's really weird but it works for everybody so everybody in this room would be the only person that hasn't don't bean shot this week will be in the race if I go to known in ray just move with their chin now bring your chin ford and down that so I can control from my mind apart tripod I can control the chin here and it's ford that end in down stop okay so that's what I call chin pen this for me is my tilt that's why you can't tilt with the chin pan the tilt is this way and this way so if I want to put a tilt in somebody's here I can go jin for down slight tilt this way stop okay when I want to control shoulders from a position I can show shoulders like this and you move your shoulders with mai that's it so I can move people with their shoulders and then chin and then towards me and down and I can move chin shoulder and tilt everything else my mirror so mira me is quite easy if you marry mate you do everything that I say and obviously we rock onto one hip marry me okay and then bring this hand up to your shoulder that's mirroring ok then I can say bring your chin forward and down stop and that's how I pose so I'm using my own hands to direct my client and I have chin pan chin showed a hands out gas now I cannot describe to you how important it is to push this chin forward and down now everyone of my images you will now start to see that everybody is pushing their chin forward and down now it's not a shoulder roll forward it's not a nick row forward okay and it's not a chin up if I get all of those it's a chin forward and down and it is a significant difference in a photograph the differences up to ten pounds if you can push a chin forward and away from the neck so that's my first role my second role is shoulder you will notice now and all of my images that we connect to the front shoulder the only time we're not connecting to the front shoulders when we're doing a cover girl posed directly to the camera and we're using our shoulder anyway because we're pushing a shoulder forward so everything I do is connected to the front shoulder now if I look at the camera now and sandra just say my name call my name say my name yet so if I look at xander this way and say my name again suit so when you bring the shoulder into play what change is body language okay because if I look to the side and look to the side of the camera this way or I looked to the side of the camera this way then I'm connecting to my front shoulder so everything I do now involves the front shoulder okay so whatever pose urine you're predicting and using your front shoulder and pushing your chin forward and down those two things alone it creates so much mood and body language in an image it's unbelievable and they would be the two most important things what not to do do not sit the chin on the shoulder okay you must I know I've done it there and boom yeah but she's doing it it has to have some space okay try and keep space between the chin and the name of the chin and the shoulder chin shoulda hands so chin showed a hands there are three types of hands in an image there's a fist so often put your look down and people will have a tight fist or they'll have their arm over somebody in a tight fist you know people hold tension in their hands then there's the chlor I like the chlor okay you see the clock all the time especially around the face to get the clock or you get deployed here or you get this relaxed claw so that down here like this and then there's the thunderbird which is my personal favorite okay so the fist the chlorine the thunderbird so the thunderbird is how rigid our hands go when we're posing I can tell how experienced a photographer is by whether hands uh in the image so I break a lot of hand rules from the old posing rules I showed the back of the hand sometimes yes I sometimes show it like that as well the club hand but the truth is is that I've tried tio hold to the old posing rules but being more contemporary fashion as well and hands all over the place and continue efficient but the idea is hands have a mind of their own so once you see it oppose you then have to go back and sit that hand it's and often people convey in quite a quite a gn amazing pose and you look down and they'll be completely rigid through their hands the hands of the last things I see it one of the most important part about hands is what it goes into next and that's body language and so I'm going to teach you how to use hands so when people say how do your hands always looks so good my tip there is belly hands okay so I say ballet hands and everybody knows what I mean I don't know why but if girls opposing and I say bring your hand up here in their stiff I'll say belly hands and they instantly do belly hands okay so it's about soft belly hands everyone knows what bella hands are and it definitely makes a difference so chin shoulder hands hourglass the most desired shape on a woman's body has an hourglass that's how we made we go out we go in we go out well we used to andi wait trying to recreate that were trying to recreate the al gods and everything that we do so what we're trying to do is create shape in the only way that you can do that is to move your hips okay so we need to be able to move our hips we need to be out of teacher clients to move our hips the anyway you can move your hips is to bring one foot up so as soon as we bring one foot up then we can shape our body here once we can shape our body and in front ways and we can shape your body this way then we can use our hands on our body and then we can use our shoulder and then we can tip out chin forward and then we can start creating beautiful poses so I'm always about up on one foot and come up on one foot and come up on one foot and come up on this toe and crossing that knee over because we're trying to create that shape in out in out so I often tell people in my presentation's there is a a poll that I read where they got a thousand men to look at a thousand woman's outfits and they just had to hit yes or no if they liked it and there was one common denominator in all of the images that they loved they showed the ratio between a woman's breasts waist and hips it did not matter what size she wass as long as it showed that beautiful ratio off a woman's hourglass now if men are triangular and we are hourglass and it stands to reason that that is the most beautiful shape in a woman's body and I'm trying to create an hourglass even when I'm sitting and lying down so for me that's all about the feet so you create a waste shape by moving the hips and legs now what I going to do is I've got to teach you about body language so when we flew it with somebody that we like we touch parts of our body that we want you to look at and the idea is that you're creating the same thing with photography you're creating the same ease with which they are touching their body parts now most women cannot do this most woman will not stand in front of the camera and be incredibly relaxed in fact they don't women don't do this and what you have to do is guide them not to pose their hands so we don't put one hand here on one hand here we touched the nick and we touched the here and we talked to the body without hands now the rule here is when you're fluting and when you are using hands on your own body for body language you never cross your heart because that blocks you so if I was floating with somebody I wouldn't cross my hand over here because it's blocking that's blocking kid so I don't even block imposing so I keep the member the diamond to state open so we pose around the diamond just imagine that there's an imaginary diamond here and we're posing around it and taking that hands all around here we never touch our breasts when you flirting with someone there is absolutely no reason that you would touch your own boobs and we never touch how stomach because that means we're pregnant okay so if you see a shot with somebody with their hands on their belly it's usually a pregnancy shot and if you see somebody with hands on their boobs or worse with their boyfriends arms around them with their hands on their boobs then you have made amazing a posing faux pas and you can remove that from your website right now if you want to cover your boobs if you want to cover your breasts and not you know to heaven image that looks new but not you can hold your arms across your boobs you can even hold across your boobs here you can hold here but there's absolutely zero reason that you would be a human bra all right very very important so you now know it's about sitting the legs having some shape into the waist and hips it's about keeping our beautiful diamond open it's about touching down and using body language without hands it's about pushing out chin forward and down and then our eyes come up and if we apply all of these touching rules then we get beautiful body language and the images so that's what we're going to be doing today we're all going to be touching ourselves on tv live on the internet asymmetry this is another one of my rules my role here is that if one side comes up then the other side must go down okay never in any two time imposing never at any time our way um symmetrical and are posing unless it's cover goal which is that one there and then we kind of rock out the symmetry by putting our hip this way and using our shoulders and then I always shoot it slightly off center but the idea with symmetry is if this hand is down here than this hand is up here and if this one comes up then this one goes down so I'll use the symmetry so out touch points now uh our diamond anything around the diamond here but nothing inside the diamond okay because we don't really need to cover up your heart and then anything underneath it that's not our stomachs so we can go down the sides of everybody here so these are our touchpoints all right and now what I want you to do is start to direct your clients to touch all of these outside points and used the hips in the shape of the body by just going through those areas now chin shoulda pan shoulders mirror may so we just did that with minor the chin pan using the champaign sandra chin and ten is the easiest way to pose anybody but in order to pose body language you do have to use a mirroring so if you're a guy and you know you don't want to get into this position where you're showing mirroring then obviously you just have to describe it so you can say cross your foot over and you can sort of do it you don't have to do the whole pose but you can still talk through the whole movement in the whole post ok from there there is absolutely nothing you have absolutely nothing if you have no connection so when I built the studio in the second year we hired two photographers and there were two girls that were chosen not for the photographic ability but for the personality because I believed anybody could learn to do what I do as long as they could connect with another human being that was going to make them an amazing photographer so one had a design background and one head of photography education background but what they did is they came into my studio and I taught them my rules but the one thing I taught them was how to get the connection into people's eyes and how to get people to see connection and how to get people to ask for connection to me so interestingly enough and the first two years those those three photographers that I trained my business partner and the other two they never shot a cz well as me in the first two or three years because they were coming through you know I've been doing it for twelve years so obviously my shooting level was a little higher but they match me dollar for dollar in the sales room so what does that tell you that it didn't matter you could make basic posing of faux pas but if you don't have that connection if you don't have that connection in the eyes then you are not going to sell your work so teaching connection is one thing I think we probably need a camera you may need to come in to hear because where does she stay here okay so for may the same way that we mirror is the same way that I can make a connection when I gaze it's somebody straight into their eyes and they will give me exactly the same look that I'm looking back at them so toehold somebody's gaze when you hold somebody's gaze and then you tell them to smile through their eyes they will naturally do that for you what happens unfortunately is when you pick the camera are is they go completely blank again so I posed from the feet up so basically if I sit this pose here and then I just I get into a position and then I say push your chin towards may okay and eyes down and the last thing I do is I make them look down for two reasons it resets the face and they can relax their entire expression so I tell them to relax their mouth most people were hold tension in the mouth straight away most people will hold all of the attention and tightness around the door so if they look down and say reelection mouth and instantly their mouth ghost fully relaxed then I can just say eyes up to me as soon as the eyes come up to me and connect with me here all I'm looking for is just that little twinkle so all I ask for is a tiny spy in the eyes so it's about having that little lee smith and it's right there it is actually an amazing thing toe watch that come forward and not everybody will give it to you or hold it there for a long time because it's hard to do and so the easiest way to describe it is I'll tell you how I see it you know when you go into the bathroom and you do what's called your mirror face you know so there's nobody else in the bathroom and you're you're juicing up you're here and you're looking in the mirror and you do your mirror face and it's here and you do you and somebody walks into the bathroom and you're like you know I like suddenly mirror face is gone for the boys the marry faces and someone walks into the bathroom and they still there but for the girls that mirror face is that face where you're completely relax your eyes have got that twinkle in your I'm always looking for people's mira face so I'm constantly looking for that expression in people and until I get it I do not have my shot okay and and we're a no matter what the poses unless I'm getting some spark through the eyes and a relaxed your I do not have it yet and I will keep talking them through it okay I will keep resetting the pose in making them push forward and looked down and I will keep asking them for it till they give it to me ok I will keep saying you need to give me those eyes back you need to give me those ice back some people will lock down and give it to straight away they'll have the full connection they'll be absolutely fine with it then all you have to do is control it but very few people will do that and the fastest way to get that connection is to sit the entire pose and then have them look up look up through there and then completely relax the face and start again so I'm constantly asking how many times did I say to you for girls to re lecture face start again push your chin forward relax your face relax you'il mouth eyes up to me now I can't do it again in ford how many times did you hear that yeah one hundred times okay so that means that in between every shot you would reset to your thinking face you're looking face you're waiting face your masked face and I have to keep asking you for that expression back that is not something you give people that is something that you allowed to come forward so we'll watch that come to fruition but one of the most amazing things I think I could say which camera my on jacob um maybe complacent to me if you can I want to show something so I try and describe it I don't know if that if the camera can see really well but basically what I'm trying tio I say to people is you can hold a gaze smile into different expressions with your eyes and you can talk and teach people this so you can look they can look straight into the camera and do this and do ten different expressions with their eyes ten different ways to hold their mouth without actually changing the expression and it really is an amazing thing to see when you look at somebody and you hold their gaze so hold my gaze and I'll do it for you do you understand that right that's what isthe that's when you do this what is that wait t because you gotta wonder what I'm doing e it's such an interesting thing tell me what that is what do you see when you're looking at then because I'm I'm not holding that back I'm just doing what I would ask of my client's I'm doing to their pace what I want them to get back to me but what is that I was smiling at you from inside myself it might not have seen match being match on camera but to you when I was holding your gaze um you're all doing the same back to me thank you se e I saw that I started catching up there's a pattern like start watching faces and sure enough exactly like he said people with they married exactly what I was doing so when I twin code everybody went like jumped a little bit and when I sort of smiled a moment and when I went to hear they've won with with me so that means that connection that you that you have that that simple change in expression is the difference between an incredible shot and not and and no matter what you shoot whether you shoot winnings with you shoot good while whether you should family if you can create no matter what you create if you can get somebody to look atyou like that and hold that gays and then smile at you from in there you have one that is the most amazing thing that you can give capture see in another human being is when they look back at you like that so when I take a female client and she's headed here and make up done and she's all dressed up and all of a sudden she's looking sexy and feeling good and they should get some too apart into a place where I've got a body looking great and then she connects up here with those eyes and she starts to do that then it's just magical and it's so easy to capture and it's something that I do not see enough in photography um I see a lot of beautiful images and I think that's a great shot of a person that's a great shot off a person but I want you to look at me like that I want you to look at me like that I want you to look at me like that that is more important than anything else that I could teach you and yet that seems to be a fundamental that's missing and a lot of portrait photography so I was at a show and I had teen large images all the way around and this girl walk up to me and she said there are five other photographers here and I said yeah it's a big show there's five other people with their photography on the walls all good photographers or vying to get portrait shoots and she said why is your work better than everybody else's I write that on my block and that there is no reason why I make fundamental mistakes I talked to match my camera's always moving I handhold I shoot high it is owed my images of grainy or they soft I get it you know I look at my work I see the fundamental errors but every one of my images have one thing that above everybody else is and I said to her will you tell me why why I'm I'm better you do you think they're better why and she said it's the way they're looking at you right so that there's a single thing that if you can create it if you can capture that thing you will be an amazing porter telefax questions when you are myriad mirroring that kind of expression are you asking them directly for it are like would you marry me on that are you just looking at him got him and hoping that they're going to and that they will fall into that you know what it's more that you've got to allow them to feel safe enough to just keep giving it to giving it to you and you've got to kind of go there in yourself and they'll follow you but just keep talking to them and they'll just bring it forward so when I look at you and say completely relax your eyes real actual face now when I looked at the boys you were both doing exactly what I was doing as well even though it's not the girl vision you were doing the guy version of that set still wigs that's all people can do it so it's not you know and and I hear a lot of people say look sixty people have a very weird idea of what six years if you tell somebody to look sixty thou they'll drop this one out on you and it's so foul and it's not sixty that's not sixty that sixty because that is uncovered you know that is really and I think yeah I think it's just a huge has a huge impact soup question from the internet set f is wondering how does the mail get the connection if we do the same it's not essential yes it is that is essential because women love one thing said and that is to be looked at by men so if you are holding my gaze and you are mailed and I'm quite possibly gazing back at you like this so it's just it's about holding people's gaze there's so many people in society now don't look people in the eye and hold the gaze for a long time because it's uncomfortable when you look directly in somebody's eyes and toe hold somebody's gays in that situation anybody can do that yeah I think it's differently it's a universal thing I don't think it's a sensuality thing yeah definitely so is that something sue that you think is comes naturally or can be learned to be trained and how how do you do they've already lent it so now a ll that they have to do now is practice it yeah and I practiced it I practiced I call it I do mira work when I practiced all of my own poses I had to teach myself how to pay