How to Pose a Model for Headshots: A Five-Minute Portrait Tutorial Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

Hi, I'm Chelsea Northrup and for our book
Stunning Digital Photography, I'll be
showing you some basic head and shoulder positions for any headshots you may be
taking. So, one thing to consider when
you're taking headshots is what their
eventual use will be. So if you're taking
a professional portrait, let's say for
someone's business card, you want them to be more serious.
But if you're taking, let's say, pictures
for a high school portrait or portfolio
for modeling or acting, they can show
more personality and it can be a bit
more fun.
Another thing to consider is your model's
gender.
So if you're taking pictures of a man,
you want to use more masculine poses,
obviously. And if it's a woman,
you know you won't want to make her lookmore aggressive, usually by using
masculine poses. So let's get started
with some basic things that you want to
go over with the eyes, and I'll show you
on Aja here.
So when you're taking a portrait, your
main focus is going to be on your model's
eyes. For that reason, you want to make
sure that they're well-lit, that they have a
catch light, and that you're not casting
any long shadows against your model's
face. Usually your model will be looking
into your camera, but if you want a more
candid look they can look off camera too.
When positioning your model's shoulders,
having them square, facing the camera,
will give the appearance that your model
is aggressive and masculine. But tilting
your model's shoulders to the side a bit
makes them look narrower and it's
generally more attractive, especially for
women.
Let me show you what I'm talking about
on Aja. So Aja, put your shoulders
square to me. There you go.
Just turn your shoulders to the side.
Now that we have your model's shoulders in position, let me show you how to turn
their head. So the most common head turn is three quarters.
It's the most flattering, the nose is
never breaking the cheek line when the
model turns their head, and it works well
with men and women but women especially.
A more aggressive head turn would be
direct just like the shoulders.
Another head turn to use is 7/8ths, which
looks the best with men.
I'll show you an example of all these on
Aja. So Aja,
could you give me a direct head turn.
7/8ths
Three-quarters please. That's right!
There we go.
The last head turn is the profile. That
accentuates your nose, your chin and your
forehead, which can be unflattering but
isn't going to be a problem with a
beautiful model like Aja.
So now that you have your head turns
down which is the direct, 7/8ths,
3/4, you have to consider your
head tilt. Which is when you move your
head from side to side. So the different
head tilts you can use are direct,
there's a feminine head tilt which is
coyly towards the camera and the
masculine head tilt which is putting your ear towards the back shoulder; it's a little
bit manly and a little bit tough. So I'm
going to have Aja show you how to do it.
Are you ready, Aja? So let's do direct
and masculine
that's pretty tough
and feminine
Perfect. The next thing we're going to go
over is what you should do with your
model's mouth.
Now we're really lucky because we had
another model join us,
Stella, she wanted to be with her mom and
she's a cute addition to the pictures
for sure.
So one thing to consider is that if
your model's teeth aren't their asset,
you probably won't want to highlight
them by having them give a full smile.
That's not a problem with Aja, she has a
beautiful set of teeth. And so, if you
want your model to have a natural smile
you want to joke with them and smile
yourself as the photographer. So Aja,
give me a nice big smile.
Another thing to consider with the smile
is that it might not be appropriate for
your model to smile.
So if they're a CEO of a company, they
probably won't want to
look big and smiley and cheesy,
they'll want to look serious.
And also when posing, you have to
consider how the different poses
interact with each other.
So if you have square shoulders and a
masculine head till you probably won't
want a big smile.
If you have square shoulders you
probably won't want a soft feminine head
tilt.
So you want to combine them in a way
that makes sense with the overall mood.
So that concludes my video on posing
your model for a head shot.
If you liked this video be sure to check
out our book, Stunning Digital
Photography. The link is down below in
the description. You can also subscribe
to our channel if you want to see more
videos like this one and we also we're
going to be having a video DVD coming
out on how to take pictures, how to pose
models, lighting, everything you can
imagine. So thanks for staying tuned and
I hope I see you next time.