Jayne Arksey : Pose & Stance

As with the facial expression exercise, I used Chris and Kat’s photo-shoot to study poses. In preparation for their wedding, Kat and I had been researching wedding photography and found an article giving posing advice on a website entitled, Rock N Roll Bride by Kat Williams.

Writer, Williams started the blog in the run up to her own wedding in 2007. Realising that she didn’t want to stop after the wedding, she decided to continue giving advice to people looking for more alternative wedding ideas. This is now one of the biggest wedding blogs in the world.

The article gives advice on ways to pose to enhance the shape of given parts of the body:

Bloopers

Great poses

Equipped with print outs of some of Rock N Roll Bride’s suggestions, we set out to the couple’s favourite part of town. I chose a selection of derelict settings to complement Kat’s lacy, vintage dress and to reflect the fun nature of her sixties style dress, we found some brightly coloured graffiti images near the fruit market.

Waist

The slight turn in Kat’s stance gives a view of her waist at its smallest, an enhancement many women would appreciate. Chris, on the other hand is facing straight on; a broad physique is more socially acceptable in men.

Hands

When shooting portraits, I find people have the most difficulty knowing what to do with their hands; they are the first things to stiffen up and appear tense. In this image, Kat has one hand on her hip with loose fingers giving a chilled out feel. The other hand, sweeping her hair adds some movement to the image, while helping Kat to feel more relaxed; this feeling projects into the resulting shot.

Hips

The idea with this shot was to follow Williams’ advice of thrusting the hips back away from the camera. This has the effect of making them appear smaller due to perspective. This hasn’t worked quite as well as hoped; A more front on stance with the hips bend back towards the wall would have been more successful.

Arms

Kat’s pose in this shot makes the most of her arms; the placement away from the body prevents them from puffing out and makes them appear more toned. The high contrast lighting highlights the curves of the arm, promoting their toned appearance.

Legs

Williams’ advice for legs is to point the toes, bend the legs and create angles. Similar to the arms, bending the legs slightly flexes muscles, making them appear more toned and shapely. This was one of the earlier images in the shoot; Chris was yet to relax, however I was really pleased with how Kat followed tips from our research from the off.

Smile

A natural smile is so important but can be difficult to pull off with a nervous model. Kat had asked early on in the shoot how to make her smile appear natural; I told her that this would happen as we relaxed into the shoot. The set below shows a trick I pulled to evoke a natural reaction in the couple. Placing them in front of some graffiti, which said ‘never yawn’; I asked them to yawn to fit with the text. To my delight, they followed my request and then burst into fits of laughter. I continued snapping away and then turned to Kat and said, ‘and that’s how you get a natural smile’.