My mom is forever correcting my posture. For the last 30+ years of my life, I can hear the quick tsk and feel her quick tap on my back to remind me to sit up and not slouch because it is unbecoming. These days, whenever I shoot portrait sessions, many times I will seat my client either on a bench, or the ground somewhere and I will hear myself saying (minus the tap on the back), “Don’t slouch.”

Slouching is unbecoming, my mother is correct, but especially in photographs. When people sit down, they tend to sit back, keeping their knees and stomachs closer to the camera, their necks are back and it highlights features that you (and they) don’t want to highlight. As photographers, it is our job to make our clients look good, so knowing how to properly pose them in seating positions is a good tool to have in our arsenal.

posing-seated-people
Of course, the model looks pretty great and model-ish in both of the above poses, but how many of you have clients that have perfect size 0 bodies, accentuated jawlines and pretty pink pouts without the help of Photoshop? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

In the following video clip from Photo Week on CreativeLive, Lindsay Adler gives some great tips and demonstrates how to pose people while they are seated so that it looks flattering, and they are not slouching. Lindsay shows how to create triangles that allow for shape and negative space (without any taps on the back and disapproving tsks). A person who is sitting up straight, not only looks smart and confident, but the eye is drawn to the face.

To learn about posing couples, check out some of our most popular posing videos like the V Up pose, in this article.

[Via CreativeLive YouTube]