Videos

Justin Laurens walks through fourteen female portrait poses using footage model Cynthia filmed at home: leaning against a wall for depth, an open forward-facing pose, a head tilt backed by a University of Bamberg study, headshots with props like flowers and scarves, expressive hands and the mini facelift pull.

Vanessa Joy poses Juliana with a Canon R5 and 85mm f/1.2, using a 48-inch reflector against green bounce. After a loosening walk she poses from the feet up, weight on the back foot, and reads elbows as body language: right angles for strength, obtuse for elegance, acute for vulnerability.

Christian Tudor teaches posing principles, not a catalogue of poses, urging photographers to practise themselves to show rather than tell. Working from head to hands, he builds an S-shape with shoulders and hips at different levels and flexed hands, applying the method to a former bride new to modelling.

Jerry Ghionis demonstrates how to move a woman from a flat-footed firing-squad stance into shape: feet together, one knee in front of the other, poses kept age-appropriate, softness plus strength for executives. He directs Rainey silently, having her mirror him, and shapes hands by rolling wrists into ballet-like positions.

A CreativeLive instructor refines a model's floor-sitting pose: legs turned sideways against foreshortening, front leg lowered and back knee raised, one hand on a knee and the other crossed over. She checks posture, negative space, curve and what sits closest to the lens, then brings out inspiration images.

A CreativeLive lesson works through the body part by part: hair moved off the near shoulder, weight on the back foot and leaning in for curve, men's shoulders angled to control broadness, paired limbs at different levels for drama, chin pushed out and down, and eyes posed to hide whites.

Julia Kelleher sets out six posing fundamentals for family and newborn work: lens compression, comparing 85mm with 50mm; camera angle, shooting new mothers from above so hips recede; elbow foreshortening; keeping everyone on one focal plane at f/4 to f/4.5; offset heads; and lifting the chin, even for newborns.

Karl Taylor critiques member images from a live session for recurring business portrait errors: a shoulder exposed brighter than the face, cluttered equipment overpowering the hero subject, uneven forehead tones fixed with curves-based burning and dodging, and small distractions such as a wire seemingly growing from a chef's head.

Karl Taylor explains business portrait priorities: the images represent the company rather than the individual, so clarify the brief and aim for confident, approachable subjects through better posture. He covers neutral grey backgrounds, storing paper rolls vertically, building lighting one light at a time and favouring a large softbox.

Fstoppers introduces Dylan Patrick's location headshot system, built for consistent, stylised results anywhere with at most two speedlights. Patrick zooms a 70-200mm to 200mm to melt a car-park background, sets a backlight parallel to the key and uses high-speed sync at 1/1250 and f/3.2 rather than f/7.1 at 1/250.