Posing non-Models, how i do it!

Welcome to my second blog! :)

I've been doing a lot of work for magazines where most of the time i have less than an hour to make a couple of photographs of inexperienced models.

It can be quite daunting at first but once you've done this many times you'll start finding the tools to get people to pose naturally yourself! :) Therefore i'd like to share with you how i get my models (which are not actually models) to pose.

This is a guy who is growing pawpaw fruit for his dissertation, because this is an uncommon fruit and project, the university wanted to share this project in a magazine.

When i arrived i expected a big greenhouse with lots of plants and fruits but this was not the case. It was more like a barn with approximately 300 plants. Which sounds like a lot but really isn't. I Knew therefore i couldn't make a wide shot and had to place him in between the plants, i also asked him to grab a tool he uses. This helps most of the times because your subject is familiar with their tools so you don't have to guide them that much when they use it. I always bring a flash with battery with me so i can light my subject. I placed the light to the left of me and made sure i had a natural source of light in the frame as well. This gives the illusion the light is coming from the roof.

To promote employment opportunities for a City i had to make a series of portraits of young people who got their jobs due to an employment planning process.

This young man got a job at a scaffolding company and so we made photographs at a training site for the company. I wanted to merge him with the scaffolding so i asked him if he could get a big piece of it and lay it over his shoulder. This immediately got me the pose i wanted. All i had to do was place a flash light to the left of him to make it look like the sun is shining on him.

This picture was made to go with an article about the future of the school this man is teaching in. It is not always possible to get someone to grab a tool or hold onto something, luckily the university had really nice architecture which i was planning to use it the shot. When i saw these big stairs and the glasshouse surrounding i knew i had to do something with it.

Not only are the lines a nice feature to play with but also the contrast between the blue cold light and warm color of the wood complements each other. When i pose someone like this i always show them how to do it by doing it myself. This is the easiest way to explain and it also lets you feel if a pose is natural. He had to look as if he's thinking about the future so i made him look away. When you make people look to the sky it looks like they're planning for something to come.

In this case i had to photograph in an office building, since there aren't any or objects to use i'll try to find a nice place somewhere in the office. In this case i had her sit down in a chair, this is a natural pose most people are familiar with.

However sitting in a chair can also look too relaxed, i tell my subjects that they have to imagine a string going through their body which pulls them up when i say yes and take a photograph. That way the model sits up more straight and the pose looks more active. Because it can be hard to place the hands in a natural way without it looking too posed i gave her a cup to hold. Now she immediately knows where to place her hands and i don't have to coordinate her on this.

I hope some of you have learned something by me describing how i pose my models.
It can be very difficult especially when people naturally don't have an appealing pose. This can very a lot between models. The most important thing is talking to your models and making them feel comfortable. If you don't know a good subject to talk about than just ask them about what they're doing, show some interest in them. If they talk about what they know they'll feel more at ease and that will reflect in their body language.

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