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Couples Transitional Posing Overview

We're gonna get into something new where I call it transitional posing. I wanted kind of a method instead of figuring, you know how you go to some area and you look and you go, oh, you're not quite sure what you're gonna do so you do one pose over there, one pose over here and it's kind of hodgepodge, right? But if I was gonna help somebody, if you said, "Scott, I don't know what to do." And I've only got, let's say, 30 minutes to help you learn how to pose. I would wanna come up with this transitional method that will help you. This transitional posing combined with the micro posing is gonna be extremely powerful. You're gonna come out of here and you're gonna say give me a couple, I can pose them even if you haven't done it before. So, what is it? It's creating a repeatable workflow, okay? And because you're changing the emotion in the photos it's gonna look all different, okay? And so, we're gonna go through all these, how we kind of create this workflow. Now this is shot all tight ...

pretty much but you can do wide too and vary it. Let's start off with number one. Number is you have a person and you have them hold hands, okay? You're creating a V. Notice I'm not shooting them square on and so they're weight is on their back hip. You always want the weight away from the camera because they're gonna look thinner that way. If you put the weight in front this is gonna look heavy here, okay? So you always put it in the back. I have them, they're holding hands, okay? And so, then you can go through and what? Smile at each other, bam! Another shot, right? And then there's different ways to hold hands, let's say you're on some stairs, right? You can have them hold hands while they're on stairs, you could also do holding hands but you can do this, the kind of prince charming kind of shot where you're bring up the hand like you're gonna kiss it. So there's different ways of just holding hands. You can be creative about it, I just show these different methods, okay? And so once you do the holding hands, you're at it and then when you do the holding hands then you do all the same things. Both look at the light, one look at the light. Whatever, you can vary it up with that, right? Then you can go to the next pose which I call is the hip to hip where they're both, bam, putting their hips together. And so, they're basically in that same pose but I'm putting them together and I'm putting their hip together. But what makes this pose look great is her hand on the shoulder, why? It's because it's forcing her to arch her back, okay? So, this little act right here of putting this hip to hip, bam, bam, right? And then putting this shoulder, hand here on the shoulder forces the person to lean back and it looks very pleasing. You cannot take a bad shot with this type of posing on this type of shot. I'll even do it as a silhouette. This silhouette shot was the hip to hip. You can kind of see her hand right there but because she's leaning back, right, it has a very good look to it. If she's leaning back you can have her leaning back even more, so you can even get more aggressive with this. Is that she could be leaning back even more and he could be leaning forward. So if she's here leaning back and even more, he could hold her like this and lean forward and it looks very, very romantic. It's like they're dancing and he's dipping her, okay? And so here's another slide with that. Look at both side light, both looking at the light. You can't go wrong. Well, you got a good looking couple on top of that but anyways, this works. It's just something that looks really cool and plus with the side light there, it is a no brainer. You're gonna have an amazing image. Here's another way I did it and here's how it looks, right? So see how his weight is all shifted. Pretend they were holding hands before that, bam, he stays the same, you slam their hips together. Let the hand up there and you got a shot, both looking at the light or looking at each other or whatever, right? And so that's that. You can continue with that pose and dip her even more and do the dip if you wanted to, okay? I'm not really a dip guy and so I don't really, I just did this to show that you do it but that's like not in my posing routine. Maybe it's yours. You could make it really dramatic where her hair could be really down, right, and she's leaning way over. And what's happening is is that at this point when you do this he is turned side ways like this, okay? And so, he can support her because he's got a wide stance and then she's dipping like this, and he can support her here because he's got a wide stance. You know how I learned that? When I was watching Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. I analyzed some of their dance moves and whenever he, a lot of times when he dipped her he was like this. He was strong like this and she was dipped back like that, and that's where I got that idea from. And that's what I kind of call when the guy is, so now he can move into a strength move and you can dip it all the way, and then you can do this pose which I call the James Bond pose. Where he's strong like this and then now she's just draped and close to him, right? It's still kind of a hip to hip but she's instead of away, now she's kind of nestled into him. And this really looks good when there's a slit in the dress. So if you find a couple and she's got a slit in that dress you got to do this pose because it looks so sexy, right? And so, you have him really, really strong, right, and then let's say the slit of the dress is right here and you have her raise her leg and she's with him right there. Oh man, killer. Killer. You can't lose. That's what you get. You're getting the strength of the guy and then you're getting the feminine of the woman and it works really well. Okay, so now when you're doing the hip to hip and then you can vary their emotions, the micro posing on top of that, right? Laughing, smiling, whatever. I mean, it's basically unlimited amount of posing that you can use and just with one routine. Okay then after that what I do is turn the bride's back towards the camera. So after they're doing the hip to hip, I'm the bride now. I'm gonna bring her around this way and I'm gonna show her back. And a lot of times there's brides that have that low cut dress in the back, you've got to feature that. Or you see somebody with a lot of ink back there, tattoos, they're gonna wanna see that so you have to feature, you have to learn to take shots where you're featuring the back too. And so, this solves that when you do this routine is when you can go. And now the bride is back to back and I'm changing the expression, right? And so now look at, I can see this part of her dress if that's featured and where do I put the light? Off to the side wherever her nose is, okay? And so I change the expression, I can also change the angle of it. And doesn't that look awesome there too? Then I could do the whole micro posing right there and smiling, laughing, whatever, closing eyes, within that if I wanted to. But now I changed my angle and so this is, let's say if you've got two shooters, right, you could do all these and you could have your second shooter shoot different angles while you're doing this. The different angles combined with the flow posing and the micro posing, you're done. It's unlimited at this point, okay? Then after that, right, her back is to the camera then I do another pose where I want his back to the camera and I call it the protector, right? So, now you have the guy, honey, let me protect you. Stand back. I'm gonna protect you, stand behind me, I'm gonna be your man, right? You have to think of these stories in your mind as you're pose, I literally do, like I'm just, like these scenarios, these ideas and emotions come in my head and then you just try to act them out in real life, right? It's almost like you're kind of a movie director and you think of these stories where you thinking of it. Okay, so now you could do two things, right? His back is against to the camera and then she's kind of snuggled. Now depending on height you could do different things. Now in this case they're about the same size in height and so it's difficult for her to kind of lean her head on his shoulder there. But if you've got a vast difference in light you could do that, right? His back is here like this and then she's snuggled up to his shoulder and then leaning her head on it if it's the right height, it just depends. If not you still can do it but what really looks great if they're the same height is if you have her stand behind him a bit here and you have her look at the light. And what I love about this posing is I am not hiding the face of one person. I see a lot of posing today where I see one face and I don't even see the other face. Where is it? It's gone. It's like I think that's the in Vogue thing now, like you feature the bride's face and then you hide the groom's face behind it. I don't know why I see that, I see that constantly now. Whereas I wanna see, you know what, he has a mom too who wants to see what he look like so you got to make both people look beautiful. And what I love about this system is that you are seeing the profile or the face of both at all times and they look great. So now I've got that eyes right. He's kind of protecting her there then I'm changing it and smiling, right? Oh, this is a no-no what I did right here is the emotions should match. So if she's smiling I should have made I picked the wrong photo, I should have gotten one where he's smiling but I probably like the light here or something, I don't know why but they got to match. So, do as I say not what as I do. (laughs) So make sure when you have them smile they're both smiling so those emotions match, okay? Then go to the closing of the eyes, right. And then finally they're walking away. His back is to her and then they're holding hands again just like they started. They started holding hands like this but now they're closing holding hands like this and looking back. Or you can have. So, I just had him look at her and then have her look back at the camera. And then close your eyes and smile, you can change it. And so, you can go through this whole repeatable routine which is pretty easy, okay? So let's talk about that, right and let's do it. How's that? One, we're gonna hold hands, right and then you can add the kissing part there like this, right? Then you can change the expression on them, right. You can just call out to me what you want them to do, smile, laugh, whatever. And then the hip to hip, okay? And then where they're leaning back like this, hip to hip and then you can do the James Bond where she's kind of closer to him and he's standing straight like this, okay? And then dipping it. So, you can have them dip it further because he's like this and he's in a good position. And so, you can do a dramatic dip if you want to, that's fine. Then after that she's gonna get up and then she's gonna turn her back towards the camera which is you guys and then I'm gonna hit it with side light. And it's gonna look beautiful there. And then the protector where now his back is towards the camera and you can do a variety of shots there. And then finally they're gonna walk away together holding hands. Another key to holding hands too is that they don't have to clasp hands all the time. They can hold hands and maybe the guy's hands, it's basically split like this, whatever and she's just grabbing on to two of the fingers. So, like in the cases where maybe the back to back here, it would be hard for them to interlock sometimes like that but maybe if she's just holding to his fingers and then looking back it's a little bit easier. So don't feel like you've got to always interlock to hold hands. If you just grab a couple fingers and if that's easier then that's fine too, okay? And so, you can also shoot this wide or tight and at different angles. And then on top of that, you can all add all the micro adjustments.