Sometimes, small changes make the biggest difference. Whether you’re a professional photographer, a hobbyist or just someone who wants to take take better iPhone pictures with the person you love, this one easy posing trick to improve couples portraits will help you take your work to the next level.
When we’re posing two people in front of the camera, one of the most important things to us is making sure our subjects look comfortable and close. That’s always a little easier when we’re posing editorially. But what about traditional portraits? The photos of two people just looking at the camera and smiling. These are the photos that every client wants. They usually become the profile pictures. The save-the-date photo, the thank-you-note photo, the hang-on-the-wall-in-our-home photo. So here’s a super simple posing tip that can make a big difference.
Step 1: Put His Feet Under Her Dress
Whenever we’re taking a photo of the bride and groom, or a mother and daughter, or any two people together where we want to demonstrate closeness, it’s important that their bodies are close together. Now, that might seem like an obvious point, since, most of the time, people put their arms around each other. But two people having their arms around each other and having their bodies close together are two totally different things, that will give your photo two totally different results. Brides and grooms are especially prone to leaving a little too much awkward space between them, mostly because a big white dress is involved, and the groom doesn’t know how to get close to her because he doesn’t want to step on her dress or get it dirty. That’s why we have to be proactive about instructing them to be closer to each other so that there’s no awkward space left between their bodies. So, we’ll instruct the groom to lift up the fabric of her dress and put his feet underneath, which allows for closeness, and makes the couple look so much more comfortable. This posing trick works really well for bridal parties and family photos, too. Here’s a link to a free blog post that’ll help you photograph a big bridal party or family at your next wedding.
Step 2: Touch or Tilt Their Heads Together
Once their bodies are as close as the can be, we want their heads to be close, too. Most people instinctively do the opposite: they leave a lot of space between their heads. If you scroll through your iPhone right now or flip through a family photo album, you’ll probably find lots of examples where you (or others) left space between your heads. Amy still has to remind Jordan every time we take photos to bring our heads closer together — and we teach this stuff for a living! So if that’s you, too, just know that you’re not alone! The specific posing instruction we give our clients goes something like this: “Okay, perfect! Now, close the space between your heads, lightly touch your temple to his cheek, look back at us and give us a big smile!” or simply “Heather, tilt your head closer into Taylor!”
For more help posing couples, click here to join a free posing class with us.
As photographers, and just as humans in general, we recognize that the closer two people are in a photograph, the more intimate it is. Right? So, when we’re taking portraits of people in love (couples) or who love each other (family or friends) we like to take an extra second to get their heads closer together so the warmth they have for each other is translated in the image.
If your clients have more of a height difference, sitting down is a great way to accomplish this as well. We cover couples with height differences in more depth (and so much more) in our full online posing course for photographers.
Example #1 | Heads NOT Touching
Here’s an example where our bride and groom’s bodies are close, but their heads aren’t touching. It’s a nice portrait, but it’s not as warm as it could be.
Example #2 | Heads Touching
Here’s one where we instructed them to touch their heads together instead. See the difference? It’s small, but it’s huge!
We just love how much warmer this easy posing trick makes the final image feel! So, the next time you’re taking someone else’s picture — or someone is taking a picture of you — whether it’s a professional camera or an iPhone, use this quick posing trick to get an even more intimate image between two people who love each other.
