When you’re photographing someone or a team for business purposes, how do you interact with them? Do you spend time trying to put them at ease, ask how they want to be portrayed, or just say “stand here, lean back, look here. YES YOU’RE KILLING IT!”? I got professional headshots done by my company with some team photos and I hate how I look in all of them. The headshots I though would be chest up so I didn’t pose my lower half or I was told to pose a certain way and it looks awful. I’ve seen the other’s photos and they look natural and relaxed. I look awkward and rigid. The photographer said maybe 4 sentences in all 5 photos for how I should stand and none look good. I’ve never had photos taken of me outside of school pictures and I really tried with posing tutorials beforehand so I was excited. Was this the norm for team type shoots or do others do this differently? What could I have done differently as a subject to get the most out of a rushed session?
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Have you noticed that you look relaxed and natural in the mirror but rigid in your photos? If the other photos looks natural and yours is not, it’s nothing to do with your photos. That’s how you look all the time. You are used to seeing other people in real life and when you see their photo it looks natural, and other people see you all the time like you are on the photo. Ask them if you look natural or awkward.
People looks really good to themselves in the mirror but that’s not how they look in real life. It’s the same if you record your voice and hear it back. You’ll just have to learn to get over it.
Thanks, good point. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’ve been trying for the past year to get used to seeing myself in pictures by taking them of myself and posing. It’s more like everyone else’s look relaxed but well staged as they have pretty much the same poses or characteristics whereas mine obviously missed something. Poor head or shoulder angles compared to others which they were told to change but I wasn’t etc.
No two photographers work exactly the same. So all we can do is speculate.
I shoot volume headshots, and I rarely have more than 5 minutes to work with someone. You are correct, headshots should be mid-chest up. I personally give a lot of direction, and I also let the subjects choose which image they want to be edited (they get one for volume jobs). The only thing I expect from my subjects is to read my pre-shoot guide (grooming tips mostly) and to listen to my instructions. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know that you could have done anything differently.
I’ve found with headshot work that people are often their own worst enemies. A very common scenario is for someone who actually is photogenic (or who at least photographed better than average) to tell me they hate every single photo, and all of their coworkers tell them “THESE ARE THE BEST PHOTOS EVER!!” Or I get folks who immediately proclaim to me that they are not photogenic, ugly, require an immense level of retouching, etc. before the first photo is even taken. It’s very hard to achieve something positive in a short time frame when someone immediately dumps a ton of negativity into the situation from the very start. So if you began your interaction with the photographer on the “I’m not photographable” train, then that may have contributed. Otherwise, it’s hard to say.
Thanks for the insight. Although it was my first time I actually went in confident and excited but it lasted less than 1 minute then onto the last guy (there were 10 of us). We weren’t given any pre-shoot stuff, just told to show up. I have no idea how to pose properly so I was hoping for more direction but got 3 broad instructions. We also didn’t get to see them after he took them so we couldn’t say anything.
I’ve had a lot of luck posing people for headshots. Mainly I have them turn their whole body to the right or left then twist to face me. I rarely have subjects face me directly with their shoulders square to me.
There are always people who say they don’t like themselves in photos. I kind of feel that way. If they have that look in their eye that they think they’ll look bad, I try to distract them. Like asking them to do a complete spin and get them right as they come back around. Once I had a kid do jumping jacks. I have them say funny words like pickle or mommy or my girlfriend or have them intentionally lisp like “Why tho therious?”
You want heavy women to really listen to you? Tell them how to make themselves look skinny in a photo…
If you don’t like yourself in photos, its really something you can work on. Look in the mirror and say its showtime or big dick or sexy. Turn sideways from the mirror and only turn your head and neck facing it --that’s the way I look best in photos so I always try to pose like that.
The best advice I was ever given for portraits is to get someone laughing and amused. If they’re having fun, their smile will be more natural and relaxed and, as a result, look more like themselves. A forced smile won’t look as natural as one where the person being photographed is enjoying it.
This is a “how do I look better in posed photographs” question, and the answer is still practice. Try out more tutorials.
Have you shown these photos to anybody else to get their opinion?
Yes I’ve shown a few people and my colleagues have seen them and said the same thing. I got one stock stiff pose for team shots of “put your hand in your pocket” that I tried to make more natural with the practise I’d done before. My own ones got less direction as well from what everyone said which is sad because I was excited to be told how to pose well from behind the camera rather than from my perspective. It’s hard to practise looking better when you don’t know what your better is.
Saving
I rather demonstrate what I want. Works much better than verbal communication in my experience.
Agree that no photographers shoot the same. If you’re just doing a shoulder up kind of headshot and don’t have a starting point and have to do it super quickly, one foot pointing forward, heels together, turn the other foot around 90 degrees to create an L shape with the feet. Then look back towards the camera. This will result in a turn in the upper body and a slight angle to the face which can work very nicely.
For a more involved shoot I am more likely to try and get them natural, get them to talk to me about something that gives them joy and so on. I’ll gently guide them to move aspects of their body that might be working against them but don’t want to make it too rigid.
Look up Jerry Ghionis and other posing masters. I like Jerry’s concept that you either rebuild a house (pose) from scratch if the person is incredibly awkward, or you renovate (let them do their thing, then alter their pose a little for the camera). I tend to ask people to be comfortable and then renovate rather than start from scratch.
For boudoir work, I generally engage them in conversation and suddenly they realize they’re a lot better at posing than they thought they were. But that’s over the course of an hour or more, I couldn’t imagine trying to get 5 headshots right with that alone.
Similar to how I do portraits – though more as a hobby and not professionally so limited experience. If you just point a camera and have them say cheese, you’ll get something artificial that looks forced. If you engage them in playful conversation punctuated by a little guidance, you get much more natural and compelling photos with more confidence without the forced/awkward smiles of someone staring dead-eyed directly into the lens.
Ultimately, it’s about making them feel comfortable, and the hard part really is just that there’s no one-size-fits all guide for that because like walking up to someone in public and having a conversation with them, some people are more willing to engage and others will be extremely apprehensive and you have to tilt your dynamic differently depending on which kind of person you’re working with.
In any case, no formula exists to work with anyone other than to be a good human being as you would with someone on the street and make it as natural as possible rather than cold and calculated.
The right way should be honest verbal posing, paired with the photographer modeling the pose so that you can mirror, and explaining why it looks good.
Honest verbal posing - means telling you which way looks good, which angle does not.
Modeling the pose - the photographer should be able to do what he/she wants you to do, easier to copy what you can already see.
Explaining - it really helps to cancel out what pose do not work, we all have angles that do not look good. The photographer should tell you that. You as a subject should not be offended.
You as the subject should, listen and go with the flow. Adjust your pose one aspect at a time, don’t let go of the pose until the photographer tells you to. Breathe, relax your shoulders, feel confident.
This is assuming the photographer knows what he/she is doing.