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Posing a Man

Lesson 11 from: Fine Art Photography

Brooke Shaden

Posing a Man

Lesson 11 from: Fine Art Photography

Brooke Shaden

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Lesson Info

11. Posing a Man

Posing looks different for men and women. In this lesson, Brooke shares her tips on posing a man in an emotive manner, while keeping the "manliness" intact. See different examples of fine art poses for men.
Next Lesson: Shoot: Posing Demo

Lesson Info

Posing a Man

posing a man I want to talk about this quickly because I think that it often gets very overlooked but with storytelling photography you could do whatever you want with a man and have it be okay so the difficulty lies in the fact that elegance is not easy to direct but manley are is easy direct manliness is not so elegance we can all do that right we I mean even if I liked got josh up here you could totally like do this and it would look great you know flowing and whatever so I can direct that I can tell you how to direct that but can I tell you how to direct manliness not so much I'm not a man I don't know I don't get it so much but I have watson lots of different tips on how to pose a man in this case we have an elegant man we have somebody who's being elegant elegant but also powerful so he's not just like being girly because there's a difference between elegant or graceful and girly he's being powerful while being graceful so here I have two poses that are very similar to one anothe...

r but one is a female one is a male they're different though the girl is very very posed she's got her hand very delicately placed if I had told him to put his hand up like this and look very delicate that's moving into girlie and not so much elegant but he's got his hands up palm's up and it's more powerful posey sort of pushing and so because of that he seems a little bit more tense a little bit more ah what's the word strong I guess in this picture here we have a man with a woman and I find that to be a very simple thing to direct usually I have the man of wrapping around a woman or something like that in this case he's doing just that he's behind her so he's being hidden a little bit by her but he's also protecting her and lifting her and holding on to her and it gives him something to do that's a very obvious thing to be ableto too direct stoic man my stoic man this is all the same man by the way I don't use many male models so we've got christopher here he's beautiful brilliant model and he's very stoic and a lot of these pictures so I haven't just standing still looking straight out and I always tell him to clinch his jaw when he's doing that in that way he has that sort of like hard exterior to him here's another example of that stoic nous so don't think of the word forgive me I don't know stoic gossipy once making up words now he's got that thing to him so he's standing very very still here interacting with your surroundings it's a great way to have a man pose and in fact anybody if you wanna have composed so I had him up in a tree I told him to sit on the tree branch but if he just sat there it would be really boring if he was just sitting on a tree branch so I told him to put one leg up higher than the other one to create that separation and then I had told him to just touch the tree branches around him in that way he was actually interacting with the surroundings now we have our goose terra hates the goose pictures she heard she's like oh my gosh it's great so yeah you got the goose I swear I did this on purpose I did I know okay so in this case he's not touching the goose but there is clearly a goose on him and so we sort of be this is weird yeah this has gotten a little weird okay so he's got the boots on him and he's sort of hunched because of it it's it's it's affecting him he can't help but to hunch over because there's something happening so he's interacting in that way he's reacting to his circumstances interaction with others here I have somebody hugging and then we have another person again wrapping behind that's a very easy way to post somebody to pose anybody toe have them naturally interact so in this case I had my friend alex I said okay just just how would you hug me if we were about to never see each other again and we're about to be separated forever I didn't actually know him at that time it was kind of weird but I was like just pretend like we're lovers or something and so we hugged and then that was the pose that came out of it this very warm embrace and then here we have that again here I have the two sort of wrapped together which is a really good way to pose people say how can you mix yourselves together as much as possible and then I have this very again stoic pose where you have the man sitting the girl sitting and he's still interacting yeah you were saying earlier than elegance is easy to direct in the mail as opposed to manage but would that be a ce faras like the male model himself because he's not filling manley wouldn't back despite it exactly yeah it totally depends on who it is that's being photographed of course because I photographed men who are very comfortable with doing very elegant things and men who do not want that at all and I've had a very difficult time directing those men because they have a very specific idea of what they look like and what they want to look like and so in that case I usually go for the more this still poses the more static poses whatever they're comfortable with because I don't want to make somebody feel uncomfortable like I'm representing them than a in a bad way but yeah I find that it really just depends on the model and asking them how they feel that they can pose okay so creating motion now I want to go through a couple more things about creating motion here about how to get that pulled out of your subjects implied emotion so implied motion is similar demotion except they're actually doing anything it's just they're making it look like they're doing something this is what I avoid a lot of the time because it's really hard to get a believable pose out of somebody if they're not actually doing it now in this case I had my subject very slowly just walk up the stairs he did it very slowly it wasn't like I just had him stand still but there wasn't a real motion and like I said run up the stairs and create that motion and feel the energy I just didn't know what step I wanted him on so I was like just keep walking and I'll photograph it slowly we'll see how it goes and when he got to that step I said okay hold that pose and then I said okay hunt a little bit like move like you're going towards like you're going to start running up the stairs so that's how I had imposed and it was a very simple thing to direct it wasn't this big motion thing but he's in motion it's implied motion we know because his leg is up and he's hunched forward that he is actively climbing the stairs oh okay so these are the different things we already talked about these I'm going to move on so if the subject doesn't understand the directions ask how he or she would naturally respond to a situation I do this a lot with my models because I find that we all understand emotion very differently we understand stories differently so let's see who wants to come up here and model oh cool yeah right that enthusiasm I know right and gosh I love it okay so here's what you have to do go ahead and stand right there you have tio let's see um create a pose that to you represents anger very stoic say so that's how you naturally respond to that would I respond that way know what I told you to respond that way maybe because that's how you responded so I always try to ask my models how do you respond to the situation because if it's very different from how I would respond then I want to know that and I want to try to work with them with what their strengths and weaknesses are and I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable especially if you're not shooting a model if you're shooting a client and you want to get a certain pose out of them or a certain emotion ask them how they would respond instead of saying okay I need you to do this because they might not be comfortable doing that it might not be something that's easy to do for them or that they feel represents them in a good way so just say how would you respond what wouldyou naturally dio and see how you can work with that so tell a story rather than asking for simple or complex emotion now like I said it's one thing to say he sad it's a whole other thing to say be sad because this has happened to you and this is what's going to happen teo so continue with that emotion this way the model can understand the context of the scene rather than trying to embody the emotion that might be different to everybody so if the emotion is different to everybody how are we going to create a singular posed by understanding a story that everybody can latch onto and ross something from as faras inspiration goes so know how you understand emotion and what motions best display what you're trying to say this is quite simple here because what we have is how are you actually literally going toe act that out ask every model that I ask myself that by knowing yourself though how you would do it you khun better direct somebody else my two favorite emotions to portray sadness and longing those are the two emotions that I'm trying to pull out of my subjects very very often so if I have these emotions that I'm trying to get that means that I am going to do that in specific ways now this is a really interesting example of how I do this because I very often if I'm doing an emotion shot with the face I'm getting closer if I really want to be able to see an emotion in the face I don't tell the model to do anything I don't say make a face I don't say look sad look belonging I do if they're very expressive people but if not for example this model has a hard time pushing her eyebrows up so I do it for her so I show that that emotion that sadness that longing in the eyebrows but I do it later on in photo shop so I'll tell her just look normal look straight ahead get the shot and then later on in photo shop I just push her eyebrows up here to make it look like she said I have sad eyebrows but I'm doing it right looking that e I know I've got that so I know I understand that because I couldn't do it so that's something that I latch onto I say oh I understand what sadness is and what longing is because that's how my face looks and when I do that so I put that in my models but I don't make them do it if they can't do it some people just don't have those muscles that do that that's okay

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Brookes Posing Guide
Self Portraiture
The Art of Self Critique

Ratings and Reviews

Kirsteen
 

Brooke says she wants to be inspirational - she has achieved this and so much more during this course. I am so inspired to follow my dream of becoming a fine art photographer and step out of a life as an academic and stop finding excuses. Watching other photographers shoot and edit is always a great way to learn, everyone does things slightly differently and I enjoy Brooke's no fuss techniques. Seeing so many of Brooke's beautiful images through the course has been great and seeing shots from the shoot through to editing really makes them come alive. If you are looking for inspiration or you want to learn techniques or new skills then this course provides all of these things with a big dose of positive thinking thrown in.

user-a81eeb
 

Brooke is amazing! I love this course. Brooke is easy to listen to. She has a beautiful insight into creative fine art . Love it! I have learned so much. I especially love that she is so candid about everything.

renee Akana
 

I love Brooke and the wonderful way that she teaches. She is a gift to us all. Jane, her model, was lovely - a beautiful girl, a wonderful attitude and a real professional.. I could not do what Jane did to help Brooke convey her story.

Student Work

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