Lessons

Lesson Info

Boudoir and Glamour Posing Part 2

So as you're directing people, you have to say exactly what I want when I was shooting for play way I had a boyfriend that I dated for a long time and he thought it was the coolest thing in the world I shot for playboy and we dated for like four years and he never said anything to me until this one day he goes, what do you say to those people? And I sat there and I started I didn't know what to say because I don't want to hurt his feelings because I thought he really does want to know what I'm saying and then I thought, you know what he thinks I'm having an entirely different experience at the shoot it playboy than what actually is going on here with the posing in my involvement with these people and I was like, you know, let me let me just tell you I said it's just like I'm shooting a swimsuit for anybody that we would know our model it wants to make a portfolio shoot it's you know turn your hips to the side to your shoulders and chest the camera lift up through the chest put your hea...

d forward down, put your hands on the heads, roll your shoulders forward that's how I speak kind of constantly and my idea is to start with the body, get it comfortable, let the person own the pose let it become theirs, and then right at the end, the head gets popped into place, and then I'm ready to get that emotion from here, so ask him to do something in the end with their eyes snap next pose might be totally different, so you want to get to the place where you're not just giving a couple things and being quiet and pushing the button you want to get this place we're constantly negotiating directions to pose is here that I do sometimes when I have heavier subjects with bigger thighs and hips, they're uncomfortable about their body, the apple, for example that might be able to have a course and only forward so beautiful cleavage, I wish credited the legs flexed and put beautiful heels on them and sometimes really awesome hose so I keep your face your eyes of you were looking at face to cleavage and legs I'm not anything else, and if that's what you see, you don't even know about the other stuff you don't know exist and who makes the happiest is the person you show the picture to. So you want to get to the point where your talk talk, talk, talk, talk so one step on your rulers shaped girl is really going to need some curves turn her on her side really pushed the hip out I shot for hooters once or twice in the middle of my playboy experience, and I was also shooting for macy's and other department store shooting lingerie. So I have a funny little analogy post for you just so you can understand the difference of the way you khun sake even within this genre. So when I would shoot for macy's and we do bras and panties, it was when I got to hooters it was like this so it's all a position where the hip in the spine, in the body, in the you know what I'm saying it's a power change but justus elegant the same kind of intensity and the message but soft meets really sexy and strong. So when you can learn to deliver all those directions when that person comes and you know the difference that's when you're going to succeed, I think is a photographer hips sideways. All the curvy lines on the body are here in here. This is where you might see the flaw. I very rarely show anybody straight on the back. Unless I have something I'm trying to untie someone's got killer tattoos or something back there I keep the attention on the face and trying to make the body looked the best, so let's talk about hands and face for a minute. Because I shoot tons and tons of head shots, and I have always known that I have tons of magazine covers and tons of celebrities, and I'm sometimes shooting people with were personas and personalities is not always glamour, glamour, glamour with me, and sometimes those people are even more interesting for me to shoot because they may have something that they're trying teo appoint they're trying to get across or my character they play or something along those lines, so then I can concentrate just on this much and try to get the most emotion other eyes possible, those kind of photographs her may really have the impact and sometimes funny they're very funny there's a couple of things that I want to say to you that are comparatively important to me. If I were to photograph rust here and do an acting head shot for him and he was sitting on from my camera, I would already be looking at his face and looking at the style clothes he's wearing are asking him what kind of characters he may have portrayed or wanna portray. So you're going to hollywood, you're going to stay there so I would try to make sure that I see that character in the expressions on his face he doesn't know what I'm thinking if I'm standing here with cam and the lights are all flawless and he's, you know got a tan and he's ready to do is picture unless I say okay let's work on this kind of a look so you have to tell these person what it is you're going for then you get them in front of the camera it could be easy thatyou could take ten pictures and nail it if you ask for what you want in every shot. So when you're working around headshots there's usually never hands and any commercial headshots acting headshots, glamour, headshots, nothing so even if they do this, don't don't do it because they won't choose that picture and you're going to hear don't do it so don't do that if you're shooting fashion of glamour and you said put the head by the face there's a right way to do it in a wrong way to do it so your hands you know things when you're first shooting that you don't see until after you take the picture is the feet and the hands look like claws or you'll should have an awkward angle on the hand and it looks sort of like there might not be any fingers. So as you're polishing off your pose, the hands touching the face should also have intention crossing the arms are always soft um as you're looking at these images on the screen there, you can see I'm showing the palm of the hand I very rarely put this next to the face because there's no makeup on it and you all you're wearing tearing your life happens on the palm of your can s o to match that you're going to be doing a lot of photo shop, and it really is distracting to the face to have this here. But you're gonna have a hand by the face softly here or here, it's more flattering, so as you're placing of hands around the face, you want to ask for that. So back to rust shooting a headshot, I'm gonna want himto lean toward me a little bit, not like that, but just this much what happens is when the head comes forward down, the eyes open naturally bigger and you seymour of the underneath the light can get in there and as they're leaning toward you, it looks like they're engaged in conversation with you, so I'm used to working with agencies with it have talent, actors, models, looking at all these images that they have. The models want to see simple backgrounds. Agents want to see simple backgrounds and really artsy, gorgeous poses with a lot of attitude, acting head shots that are successful need to have a hundred percent connection and I so if we wanted to show russ is a bad guy as a comedian or any of those we would need to find a way to illustrate that with light or with the way we have imposed and the final touches air going toby to what he actually looks at you with those eyes and if he's about to crack up smile but no teeth you're going ask for those things so I use an analogy when I'm talking to people about headshots there's a thousand ways to smile at me without showing me your chief let's see if we can figure out twenty so just going through that in twenty poses might let you find something within yourself oh I asked him to do this and wow look what happened to the picture I just took that's a different person there I haven't seen before so when you pull up bodywork like that russ goes back to his agent in l a and shows him all the pictures and they go well look at those images well russ you've really got it going on russ culture because they love a picture that's what you want to say it's not pushing the button where the person is looking at you going because russ needs to look like he's got some something going on in there to say you could be a bag good guy funny guy whatever for all the different roles you might go after even that with the personas of all the things that we photographed this week the eyes of the connector so we want to make sure hands or soft the head is forward and there's a menagerie of different expressions coming from the face so if I tell people to put their chin down I end up with this weird thing here so I say forehead toward me bring your forehead toward me tip your head towards me so then you get that reaching out sort of thing if you have somebody you shooting and head shot off in their mature, they have shallow chin or looseness in here you can stand up higher than original rule I gave you for eye contact and this shoots slightly down at them and I'm talking about no higher than like right here and then have them reached to you and it will define the jawline you can ask to make up artist for their assistance let's say you interview this person in advance and you see that you're not you know something I'm talking like your grandma and let's say you know that you feel that you need a little contour help here darkening under here, highlighting a long hair that brings this forward pushes that back disappears use a little more shadowy light it's gone so again that person will go well look, I feel so much younger so projecting the hands forward, finishing touches on the photographs, hands, feet, toes so the fingers should never be like this on the hip there should be like that on the hip, so kind of together, but not like you know everything shake it out, start again hands in the pocket is fingers and thumb out or some and hands down fingers in a pocket sound out our sound man figures out got that one or the other, but not both. You never put the hand in the pocket with the fist call it rocks in the pockets back if somebody really prayer annoyed about their hands, do call your shots with hands in the back pocket or put one forward, and sometimes you'll hear that, but the finishing touch is pretty fingers and making it look like it was a natural application don't ever push don't ever lean push if somebody's heavy and you haven't kneeling on the bed, don't let him sit down and squish ask him to elevate, but when you ask him to elevate just a little bit, you better be ready to click. Don't be tinkering twitching with your camera, trying to find out what you're going to dio because that's going to come into the play and the person's gonna get frustrated with you so you want to be rolling and know what you want to some degree so the ruler worked with the body per curves pushed their hips out bring your shoulders up and forward if you're struggling with things to do with somebody putting them on the bed or shooting a headshot first will take the edge off if you're like so nervous your voice is going like this slow down take a few pictures go sit beside them show them the pictures come back and then you'll start to see a transition in yourself as a photographer go look at the images ask yourself that I make them look the best I can if you didn't be honest enough with yourself to say I need to go back in there and shoot some more pictures I didn't I saw their legs I saw how great their legs were and I didn't do it don't walk in there and say um I didn't do it walk in and say you know I got some great pictures of you lying down I got wonderful pictures of your headshot but I never shot your legs in this cool post can we do a couple more don't wait another change in the hair and makeup because you can't go back so it's best to make the changes as you're going along so I connection there's a couple of things I'm gonna give you for what two d'oh I know this sounds like a lot of information but these are the things that truly have made people tell me over the years your photographs have it in the eyes so if the eyes are blank I don't care what we just did with that body then we're not selling anybody anything so were there and we saw emily with a little sad which was awesome it more it married perfectly with the genre this girl was wearing this red outfit with this killer makeup this's a glamour headshot so glamour had shots kind of go for miss georgia miss america miss and usually harris moving and fuller there's a look to it if somebody caires you to do that you went to your home market was study what is their hair doing was a background look like was a light look like where's the reflector what's the body doing are they looking me straight in the eye? Are the happy or they removed you want to know what that expression is? Because that's really what the photograph is about the expression so right at the end get your party the way you want it have her standing however look around the camera lift that hair out with a fan as for the eyes snap and try to get every angle once you know you've got it once do a couple different tilts on the head bringing chin out and down turn it the other way turn away around she back over the shoulder so in each headshot siri's I shoot for some of that hires me, I might shoot two hundred fifty pictures, they change clothes three times I narrowed down to about fifteen to twenty if you give somebody two hundred pictures to go home and look at, they're going to kill you and you're gonna never sell anything because you've given him too many pictures to look at, so you only want to give them access to pictures that you would publish in a magazine or your book, so you better start editing down to the ten top ten I call it the job well and everything uh model shoot I call it the drop dead twenty the drop dread twenty means I wouldn't have a heart attack if they were published so u that's the way you edit edit down not not post processing at it, so magic and eyes is where it happens if it needs more makeup to have more magic and make more impact than you have to be able to tell that agent are that makeup hair person exactly what you're looking for. So I'm going to show you in my postal guide I did kirby girl standing sitting, reclining sexy girl to give you guys some ideas of things you could do for poses that have impact when I shot for playboy, the girl was outstanding and the rule of tom she was either here here or here she was never lying down, exposing anything. It was always upright suggestion, but never going there if you know what I'm saying, so there's a million ways you can be provocative and your photographs without showing anything bad, I think that most of my images that are the sexiest are fully closed. I saved the nudes for art, so I'm not totally to go about it in different directions, so we're selling the subject for themselves. We want to make sure that the feeder pretty the body is pretty as for the tummy to be tucked, put your belly button to your back and don't ever let anybody do this so feet pointed, finger, soft shoulders roll forward so you look like a cat. So you brought to our picture and you have to hear that in your head and you're gonna laugh. But later, you know, I mean, I'm you know now, okay, so all of these poses the girl and I would try to pose, okay? And they always do it for real and then our faces, maybe so you want to get the post down and bring in the face head comes forward now, she's talking to you, you're taking her picture, that picture translates to her husband or boyfriend or herself, maybe if that's what she wants to have taken so you're going to want to know what to do when that person gets in front of you and I call it work in the post. So today, when we shoot over here, I've got red background, red chair and a cute little outset, and we're going to ask likes you come out a few minutes and pose her. I'm going to show you all the pretty, posing for the hands I'm gonna try to go through no more than forty pictures and show you exactly how to do that, and hopefully that will free your stress level a little bit and you guys can take some more interesting pictures and that's it for me on opposing thing until the demo. So these are all of the sponsors that I have that made this all possible this week for me to be here and have all the tools that I needed to show you had to do what I do. I hope that you guys have been able to take some tools for your tool chest and go back to your photos to you maybe think a little less stressed out about things then you have before just remember that every single person you shoot, no matter how old they are young they are they want to know if they could still be sexy, so that doesn't mean stripping them down to their underwear. But that means bringing some magic in their eye and some presents with the pose that you have them in. If you present yourself that way to that person, they're going to think you really care about them and what kind of photograph you're taking of them and how your relationship is going to go from there. So after they leave, and they've had this amazing experience, and you continue to feed them beautiful poses where they looked. Killer killer eyes, killer legs, killer body. They're going to remember that they're going to walk out the door and then tell everybody about the trouble you went to to take the photos have, um