How to Pose a Couple

hey guys today i'm going to show you how to pose couples hi my name is jerry gionis i'm a wedding portrait and fashion photographer i've been shooting for 27 years and teaching for 20. i'm going to share some of that experience with you right now by teaching you how to pose couples and how to go from this to this by the way guys i have an amazing course the photography quick start it's a free download and you can actually enjoy this by clicking the link right up here or down below so you have a couple in front of you what do you do they're standing like this they're waiting for a photograph now cute couple but we have to bring out a little bit of finesse now usually when i'm photographing a couple i start with what i call the safe shots it's like you do what you have to do to do what you want to do so get the shot clean shot looking in the camera smiling no problem and then you can keep on going from there now depending on whether this is photographing for a wedding photographing for an engagement session photographing a couple whether it's a young couple an older couple just get it cleanly done now when they're looking at the camera i'm okay with the hands uh of the guy for example being in the pocket or being on his side i'm okay with the hand being on the hip for the girl or whatever it might be doesn't really matter because we're not really trying to convey romance or anything like that it's a clean classical traditional photograph so in this case they're standing like this so now rainey's just sort of you know politely sort of waiting and she's actually trying to put her weight off her legs a little bit like this there's a little bit of finesse to what she's doing but it's important that we adjust her accordingly so first of all if you are photographing a couple and you're suggesting a relationship or intimacy in some kind of a way it's important that they turn their bodies actually towards each other so let's do that on a 45 degree angle make sure your shoulders touch sort of right at the end as you can see bring your arms around each other so right there keep your hands on the side so this hand's in the pocket so we can see jacob's hands in the pocket and rainey's hand is right here on the hip now let's uh let's pay attention to a couple of things now jacob if you bring your hand up a little bit higher on this side and bring it more this way now you can see this is a common mistake we can see his left hand right on the thinnest part of the waist it's a little bit higher because she already had her hand on her hip but i don't like that hand popping out of nowhere now i'm happy to sacrifice perfection for emotion as in you know he's drawing you know the woman he loves close to him and that's fine but i feel like i just want to lose that distraction if it's not adding something to the photograph it's probably taking away so in this case that hands are distraction so we'll get rid of that left hand now um bring your left hand right on there as well now we established the the male pose which is basically for me as far as i'm concerned we turn his body on a bit of an angle we actually are going to photographing him oh sorry we're going to photograph him um with his leg bent as close as the camera as well as the common denominator is that her leg that's close to the camera is also bent watch what happens when we actually put all the weight on the front leg of rainey's so now what's happening is we're whiting that dress there's a little bit more junk in the trunk so to speak it depends on if you want that the good thing about the world we're living in today we're celebrating you know uh curves and things like that that's fantastic so if you wanted some more curve there you could put the weight there but you can see there's a disconnect it's almost like the lower part of your body is facing this way and then her upper body is facing that way there's a disconnect so i don't like that so we're going to shift her weight and put all the weight in the back leg so let's start from scratch here for a second stand shoulder to shoulder flat footed looking at me okay so right now i'm going to photograph that portrait you may have seen this kind of shot and that is sort of like the uh oh what do you call it that that that fork um what is that uh american gothic there it is so you may have seen that shot the the the painting the american gothic it's um it's flat to the camera they're very stoic and it's been popularized in our industry for the last several years and it's perhaps been and gone but i feel like standing there with no emotion that's exactly it there's no emotion it doesn't make me feel anything so i don't want that shot i want a little bit of finesse so now let's turn our bodies towards each other keep the feet flat-footed for a moment so come nice and close together again okay so the hands are by this side at least their bodies are turned to each other there's some kind of emotion happening there let's take a shot like that for the moment okay but there's nothing going on let's go a little bit further one step further bring your arms around each other the ones furthest away from me great stop there keep the feet flat-footed okay so right like that great so now what we'll do is we'll leave jacob where he is we'll we won't move him an inch at all i'm going to get rainy to point your toe towards the camera slide the heel back in bend that knee a little bit right over like that good hands on the hips and now you'll notice this it's really important that the web of the hands meet and marry up to the thinnest part of her waist so if you let's say you had a plus size girl or a little bit more curvy and you wanted to soften those curves a little bit you might deliberately put that hand over where it looks a little bit thicker in my perspective my humble opinion the common denominator and what's going to look good with most girls the web of the hand between the thumb and the forefinger go on the thinnest part of the way so it brings attention to that area so we do that fantastic so rainy's looking good she's turning her body away from the light source she's looking straight to the camera for the moment no problem and she's bending her knees so we're getting these beautiful curves now let's take that shot the problem with that is she's looking great but he's just doing nothing he's like well we've got curves for her he's just looking straight up and down there's not much finesse now watch what happens see we've got the hand on the hip for her let's put his hand in his pocket okay let's do that shot but then he still looks a little bit stoic there's something there's no energy shifting to the girl that he loves so to speak so now what we're going to do is he's going to just lean a bit more forward and then lean into rainy then and then automatically you see what he did he actually bent that front knee which is fantastic so putting all his weight on his back leg and then bending that front knee is really good so now we put their faces nice and close together perfect turn the bodies in a little bit slightly perfect very good and we take that shot that's a lot more for nest than where we started so if you look at those shots that we just did we've got the finesse of that then you've got basically her looking good but him very stoic him with the handout and then very straight and then of course doing nothing looking at the camera great so now we have that foundation you've seen that progression from literally stoic flat looking in the camera to at least some kind of finesse and then now we're looking in the camera but in a more of a finesse way so if i wanted to see the dress see the suit i would not getting them holding their hands in front of the camera right now in front of them otherwise it would just cover up the dress and cover up all these different things so a couple of things if you're going to get them to hold hands so just hold hands in front with these ones in the front so do the exact same pose so the exact same pose so hold each other like that and hold like that great okay so he sort of knows how to hold her like a gentleman okay that's a nice little delicate way if he slides his hand back a little bit and then we bring that down a little bit and just make sure jacob your left hand we can actually see it there uh and you know what we'll do actually i want to do it in a bad way so we can show you bring that elbow running this way and so bring it down a bit so so turn your body outwards again just simply where you are like this just bring your elbow like that bring it right down that's it and a bit like this bit more good okay and then bring it flat up against your body and then bring the shoulder down okay so what you're seeing right now eyes of the camera so what you're seeing right now although rainy's got a great figure she's putting her arm against her body and making the arm look flat and larger than it actually is we don't want that also i can't see the silhouette of her of her figure and her curves right down here so what we're going to do is this if we bring their hands down stop there for a second then bring the elbow back this way stop there too much go back beautiful and down a little bit now we see a little bit of a gap between her elbow and her body therefore we can see her silhouette when the face is touching again okay perfect so there's a way of actually photographing a couple holding hands but also getting the curve of her and that's basically it now let's say for example you had a plus-sized girl and had a little bit of weight in this area you can adjust these hands to a point where we're going to hide and soften those areas now don't forget too posing for the camera is one thing but changing the angle will change the whole perspective of what's going on so let me explain by the way very important to know this that whenever you're photographing someone if you get them to mirror you it's the easiest way for them to actually understand what you want from them so if you guys hold hands there for again for a second and you guys nice and close together so if i said to you guys i want you to mirror me and i did this makes sense you see how easy that is turn your faces that way perfect so straight away they know what to do because they can see it the problem is before they even mirror you you have to know what you're doing to give them something to mirror so let's come back again so let's say for example we've got that pose sometimes what i do is when i'm photographing couples i'll say to them guys pretend you're on a turntable and then i don't change a single thing pretend you're on a turntable and now i'm just turning that turntable that way yep keep on going mate kim and going good stop there so bend that knee in there ronnie good close the gap and then looking out that way assuming i was from that perspective now so if you look at that particular shot from this angle it doesn't look as good because now rainey is completely flat to the camera and now we've got jacob completely at the side of the camera so you for example may have a second shooter shooting from a different angle they might get decent light because you've actually posed them according to the light but you're not getting the great angle but remember too though there's going to be some poses that are going to look really really good simply with a different angle and it's up to you to work out whether it looks good or not quite simply i look at every guy and say if i was him right now would i be happy with this photograph do i look good do i look handsome am i getting a double chin am i getting a gut what's happening if i was photographing her i'm photographing my wife for the day would i like those curves do i want her to look a certain way do i want her to look boxy and so on and so forth but right now though we're specifically talking about posing couples which means that we're suggesting some kind of intimacy and romance or some feeling together so we started with that beautiful traditional shot let's do that again so starting again by holding hands on a bit of an angle there okay so close again so let's say for example if you got the couple to look at each other let's do that now they're so close they're almost going cross-eyed and it's a bit weird right so look at each other for a moment okay it's weird when you're that close especially even a little bit closer you wouldn't really be looking at each other's eyes you'd either be kissing and or about to kiss so of course they're not a real couple we're not going to get them to kiss but what could be a really good shot is this i might get them to turn a little bit more to each other so a little bit more side on four heads touching good now if you now this is really cool this is what i'm happy about now finally jacob looks like he has a double chin now he doesn't but it's the way i posed him because he's wearing a turtleneck and now the skin is gathering by simply bringing his chin down because that's what happens to normal people under those circumstances but here's how we're going to fix it so let's go nice and close and show you how we're going to fix it so go close again don't be conscious of it but you can sort of see the gather of his chin here first of all we simply can say to him just bring your chin up like a turtle okay so straight away we've fixed that also if you look at the intimacy of that photograph if i i say guys pretend my my hands are your faces and i say do this so start again from there now turn this way stop so now you get their profile but you see more of what's happening so now look diagonally into each other and stay there for me so now we're going to go back just first of all let's do that double chin shot so let's let's just look at each other that's it perfect good hold it okay now chin forward like a turtle yeah that's it now um jacob surpass her a little bit on this side come a little bit closer to me so not so much your body just bring your face so right now you're there just come a little bit sort of more that way that's it just there okay now bring your foreheads touching again sort of more evenly and then turn your faces outwards towards me like you did before good chins up good eyes down into each other beautiful eyes just looking right on the ground there mate right under feet there you go just that move beautiful now if they're a real couple i might even crack a joke and say hey jacob look at the view and then sometimes the guy's like oh my dude not the freaking view the view dude like and now that makes him laugh and now we've sort of broken the monotony of of the posing so remember guys stop demonizing posing posing is really bringing out the best in people because they don't know what they look like it's up to us to learn how to bring out the best in them but again let's go back to our mandate for this episode and that is how to photograph couples so we've got a nice traditional shot looking at the um looking into each other as a bit of an almost kiss but here's how you can vary up the pose really really quickly and get a couple really cool shots um and that's i'm glad you remind me of this actually jacob so you've got your hand in your pocket um bring your let's say rainy bring your hand on his chest okay perfect so now her hand is actually very delicate i love the way see here's a big problem when we're posing women's hands on men's chest sometimes it's flat on the chest like this it doesn't look that great so what we want to do is just just actually do that again it just doesn't work it's just flat doesn't look good at all but just softly and then out like that doesn't look good at all now go nice and delicate like we did before that slight little bend now thankfully i've worked with ronnie several times so she knows exactly what i'm about to do so she's making my life a little bit easier but it's a little bit more delicate and it just it just curves beautifully and there's a bit more emotion attached to that now you can see how her hand is quite emotional on him but his hands in the pocket so if we go back to that particular foreheads touching shot and then we just do that the faces are saying i love you the hand is saying i love you his hand is saying i don't really care so what i want to do is i want to get take his hand away okay just relax the jacket a little bit and hold her on the waist just in the waist there now it's important we said before we don't want his left hand on the other side covering up the thinnest part of his waist but we also don't want this hand to cover up the thinnest part of his waist so for her waist so we're going to slide that hand back into your mate stop too much come back stop there we go your left hand i can see your fingers pop out okay now forehead's touching and now you can see that that's a nice little delicate pose now here's one thing that's happened wrong with this she squished her arm up against her body and i want to separate her arm from her body so bring it back again so here's what we're going to do bring their upper bodies guys keep your feet there but your upper bodies lean towards the camera stop close the gap now bring the elbow off stop beautiful now that's a great tip if you're shorter or as i like to call you down to earth you're closer to the earth you get the couple to lean towards you so you become parallel to them but in this case i simply did it so that if she just put her arm off her body because i didn't want that i'm pressing up against the body she's going to look like a chicken wing like what's what's up with that but if i do this to the camera and then i just tilt down now my arm is parallel rather than the elbow being close to the camera there's all these little nuances that you just have to to work out but certainly we're giving you these ideas right now so make sure you practice them okay all right we see rainy sort of uh fanning herself of course right now just letting you know it's uh we are in las vegas and i don't know what that is in uh it's probably about 100 degrees here in vegas which is about 37 or 38 degrees we've got port jacob actually uh wearing a turtleneck but it was actually his choice and uh rainy is just fanning herself so it's all good all right so let's have a look at the last shot we did okay perfect nice little intimate shot just to let you guys know as well by the way so we are photographing in a garage and we've got wind uh what i call window light but basically it's just light coming through a garage door and it's just open light coming through and that's basically it so yes posing you have to do according to the light and just to let you know i am favoring the light on him where traditionally i would probably favor the light on her but today's class is really about posing so i'm focusing on the posing and not terribly worrying too much about the light but we will do that in a moment to make sure it favors her as well what else can we do with a couple what else can they do with their hands what else can suggest intimacy and so on let's go back and do that let's close the gap again let's start from where we were so your hands were on the hips okay your hands were there your foreheads were touching you're looking into each other great and now watch what happens do you see all of a sudden his leg is completely straight his legs saying i don't really care but his face in his hand is saying i love you so we're going to bend his knee great just a little bit yep perfect awesome so now what we do is we can simply do a couple of variations so um rainy if you don't mind can i get him to sort of just emulate a kiss on on your forehead okay so just a little kiss on the forehead there jacob and then close your eyes as you're doing it beautiful perfect now and then rainy um turn your face this way so just tilt tilt til chin up a little bit turn your face there tilt more this way good you see how easy mirroring is because you can see what i'm doing and then i want you to basically give her a little kiss right on the cheek there just on the cheek yep perfect now it's important that we don't do this if you don't mind if it's okay kiss her on the cheek but where your nose is almost going into her eye but like this is what will happen naturally because naturally this things organically happen and i've made these mistakes before so again so turn you there you go we do not want that so it's either sheets because she's naturally a bit shorter usually we're going to tilt her face more one more one more tilt chin right up and then kiss her right sort of and a little bit more towards me mate look at me that's it and chin down and then rainy chin right up so you get your eye out of his nose there or vice versa and then give her a little bit of a dip that'll force her face even more there we go perfect perfect there we go awesome beautiful so now we get his nose out of the eye at least not right in the eye soccer because that's really weird okay now how can we use the hands to suggest more intimacy well this is a really cool way of doing it so first of all let's say that she's guiding a kiss so your hands are on on her hips there your your hand your four fingers in fact let's do it the bad way put your hand just on his face just like that yeah this is basically like mom like you know your mother like saying eat some no prosciutto good boy it's the way i would i'll hold my my golden doodle and i'm a good boy um it doesn't work or you might put your hand like this okay that doesn't work either because it's just it's not working right so what we want to do is god made our hands like this because the ear can go right here so the four fingers are going to be behind the ear so you're going to be doing this ready yep and now turn the faces into each other okay perfect turn your faces outwards towards me a little bit there we go so see how we got rid of that chin there again and now do you see how his left hand is creeped in to cover up the thinnest part of her waist great so we fix that never forget that perfect so that hand is there now if he puts his hand on her hand that would be a little bit feminine but if he if if he starts with her his hand on her face like we'll do now so let's now say you're guarding a kiss so i want your hand in the same position like this perfect so it's up to you whether you want the rawness of the hand going through the hair in this case i'll just leave it like that so you can see what the hand is doing now her hand watch what happens so let's say for example let's take that shot look at each other for a second great now her left hand can go on his wrist now do you see how she's sliding it down and then slightly bending it now turn your faces outwards towards me good now both of you lean your upper bodies towards me beautiful and that's slightly turned this way guys look at me there you go just there perfect and now looking into each other like that beautiful relax do you see the progression of that particular sequence how everything made a difference with what we're doing okay that gives you a few examples to start off with in terms of something traditional and then hugging and then maybe kissing and all that kind of stuff now let's say for example we wanted to do it a little bit of a different way and we wanted to take advantage of the direction of light so and we wanted to favor her let's do that so let's switch sides okay so now it's all in the way you ask it took me years to work out the following phrase now let me first of all let me first of all ask this in in a way where it might confuse the couple so guys if i basically said i want you to hug and rainy i want you to hug his left leg with your right leg what would that look like okay so she did it actually too good so [Laughter] okay but if i said that you i mean you're probably being a lady about it but you'd probably do something like this right and that it would just look a little bit cheesy and a little bit hammed up and it's like uh it doesn't look that great so what we want to do is we want to adjust that leg and ask it in a way that gets the result that i want so if i say this jacob you can come this way mate i say rainy can i ask you to embrace jacob's leg with your leg but make sure your toe touches the ground perfect so you see how now straight away we've got the curve on her body we've got that round curve on her butt line as well but his leg is very straight so let me just take a quick shot of that first now i want you to slightly come back a little bit there mate with one step and that's it good and then slightly bend your knee good perfect now both of you if you can pretend like you're on a turntable and you're turning towards me there you go do you see how that angle works a lot better because before her left leg looked a bit too straight but now her right leg is covering that perfect so now what we're going to do is we're going to actually suggest that maybe he's whispering in her ear so let's do that so whisper in her ear on the other side so i can't see good chin up for me okay so good say that there's a few problems with that and i'll fix it in a moment good so the problems with that is that he's looking off into nowhere we think because we're saying kiss the cheek and on the other side of the face we can't see it but even if we can't see his eyes if we don't get him to put his face down and turn his face left he will not look engaged so bury your head into her head there and then where i can't see you so literally there we go just there perfect good chin up for me rainy so if the light's coming from this direction which it is look at that beautiful shadow on her face that's looking amazing let's take that shot close your eyes there ready for a second good now her right hand is disappearing into nowhere so we've done the shot with a hand on the chest let's see what a hand looks like on a bicep so randy do it like this okay so a bit more relaxed but this is a common problem let's go again so bury your head into her face again there on that side beautiful hold it there that doesn't look good it looks like this she's tackling him for something now let's just even slide it back this way so no no same position there jacob so you stay where you are rainey's doing all the work here so bury your head into into her neck that's it beautiful so now what we're doing is we're going from this and i roll the hands around now that is more finesse there's a bit more more beauty in that now look at look at her figure gorgeous curves love the hand over there the arm is slightly off the body chin up closing the eyes jacob just get rid of your hands on the other side beautiful hold it there hold it beautiful now what does a hand look like on a wrist let's slide it down perfect let's relax that a little bit go a bit more further so i always like to start off up here even like actually poorly that's it don't move hold it there and then slide it around and gradually slide it into you stop there perfect good hold it there chin up close your eyes now in this context i actually don't care if his hand is com some somewhat hidden because that's the nature of the pose if i usually like to have gaps between body parts but when you've got a couple intertwining i find that's more than acceptable he can bring his hand a little bit lower but that might feel like he's about to grab the butt that's a bit cheesy we don't want that and also if you wanted let's say a gap between her elbow and her back which gives her more of a silhouette then she would simply slide the hand down so keep on going down this way and then put your hand on his hand see what's happening here guys is that her hand on his hand he's saying i like where your hand is so it's all about body language okay and if you don't understand bottle language just say well what would a couple in love look like feel like what would they do how would they kiss how would they hold and so on relax those fingers okay so now just relax don't move and then now just give it a bit more finesse too much just somewhere in between beautiful love that gorgeous hold it there gorgeous but you see the difference between where we started and then where we got to is just so crazy so really really important to understand thank you so much for watching hope you liked the video and if so please give me a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications for future videos please leave a comment so we can connect and i can answer any of your questions see you in the next episode and don't forget you don't have to be the best you simply have to be better than last week we'll see you soon you

Channel: Jerry Ghionis

Views: 3,260,648

Keywords: photography, wedding photography, tips, tricks, posing tips, posing tricks, pose a bride and groom, posing secrets, nikon, ambassador, Jerry gionis, posing secret, better posing, improve posing, free tutorial, free, poses that work, right poses

Id: kx712YLTn6Y

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021