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A Guest Post by Kaspars Grinvalds from Posing App.
In the previous articles in this posing guide series we looked individually at posing female subjects, posing male subjects and posing children (there are links to the full series of posing guides below). In those individual person portraits the main subject was a single person and her or his personality. In comparison, couple photography is more about connection, interaction and above all – feelings between two people. And most probably those are very deep and passionate feelings, which makes couple photography so delightful and positive.
Generally a couple should be easy to engage in a photo shoot. If they are initially a bit shy or feeling uncomfortable, just ask them to show you how they felt and looked when they met for the first time. You will invoke them on an emotional level, providing you with natural and loving expressions in their portraits
1. Easy starting pose standing face to face (but looking to the camera) and her holding an arm on his chest. Take both close-up as well as vertical shots.
2. Ask the couple to stand very close to each other to catch intimate close-up portraits. Don’t be afraid to zoom in and crop real tight!
3. Very easy and cordial pose with him holding her from behind. The couple may look straight into the camera or at each other. They might even kiss for a more emotive shot.
4. Fun and loving pose with her holding onto his back and shoulders. Pay attention to hand positioning: It should be simple and natural.
5. Just a variant with her holding him from behind. Remember that the couple doesn’t necessarily have to look in the camera. For better results, make them interact with each other by talking, flirtatious looks, laughing etc.
6. Creates a very romantic mood. Works best outdoors with some open space in the background. Shoot only slightly from a back. Remember that you have to be far enough to the couples side to be able to capture each person’s closest eye, otherwise you will create an impersonal, “empty” shot.
7. Find some elevation and shoot your subjects from above. A common pose shot from an unusual angle is always creative and will often reward you with surprisingly good results.
8. Another romantic pose. Works best outdoors with some open space in the background. Works also very well as a silhouette against a bright background, in front of a sunset, for example.
9. Easy to realize pose for a full height shot. Creates a calm and affectionate mood.
10. A fun pose. Don’t presume this to be appropriate only with younger people. If an older couple feels fine with it, this pose will work absolutely superb with them as well. Try different framings, take full height shots, half height ones and close-ups.
11. Very nice way to show the affection when meeting each other. Works very well in crowded places, such as a famous meeting point in a city, trains or metro stations etc.
12. A pose with a little bit of fun. The crucial part is her leg positioning, each leg should be bent in different angles. While he is still lifting her, take a close-up portrait shot as well.
13. Take shots of the couple walking hand in hand approaching from a distance. Shoot in burst mode only! However, the majority of your shots will look awkward because of the leg movement. Therefore, the second part of your job is to select the photos with the best leg movement and positioning afterwards.
14. Another variant with a walking couple. This time couple walks close together and holds onto each other. Again, take several shots and choose those with the most elegant leg positioning.
15. Never forget that there often are good opportunities simply shooting from the back.
16. A couple lying close together on the ground. Make them lift their upper bodies a bit by using their arms as supports. He might embrace her gently. Shoot from a very low angle.
17. Another variant with a couple lying on the ground. This time with a little interspace.
18. A good example to show that two persons can very well be positioned asymmetrically.
19. Informal and fun way to pose for a couple lying on their backs.
20. A cordial pose, ask the couple to sit comfortably on their favorite sofa.
21. Sometimes shooting a couple may mean maternity photography. Some poses from this couples series work also pretty well for such an occasion. Simply adjust a posing accordingly to show the couple’s feelings about and interactions with the unborn new life.
Here’s 16 of our favorites for you to print and take with you on your next couple shoot:
Allow me to repeat the previously stated – look at these sample poses as a starting point only. That’s the reason why they are rough sketches instead of real photos. You can’t and should not repeat the pose exactly, instead adjust the pose creatively according to your shooting environment and scenario.
Check out our other Posing Guides in this Series at:
- Posing Guide: Sample poses for photographing Women Part 1
- Posing Guide: Sample posees for photographing Women Part 2
- Posing Guide: Sample poses for photographing Men
- Posing Guide: Sample Poses for photographing Children
- Posing Guide: Sample Poses for Photographing Couples
- Posing Guide: Sample Poses for Photographing Groups of People
- Posing Guide: Sample Poses for Photographing Weddings
Grab Our Guide to Portrait Posing
Kaspars Grinvalds is a photographer working and living in Riga, Latvia. He is the author of Posing App where more poses and tips about people photography are available.
But I'm still alone :')
More dreary heterosexual posing. How about the reset of the human species?
How about a self posing guide for those of us who would like to try self portraits?
Plus you can be inventive and create your own shots to reflect your couple's characters.
Check out this website! http://gogetfunding.com/project/help-pay-for-our-wedding-3
Excellent post. Very easy to understand well done !
Its really simple to understand and I think we all can get more poses from these. Great article and big help! Thanks.
A man is ant there always will be a man, and a woman is and will be a woman. No matter how much he/she will try to pretend the opposite. IMHO, other advises regarding homosexuality problems should be beyond the scope of this site.
This is wonderful but lets say your couple is a same-sex couple. How could you make some of these poses more famine or masculine?
Excellent starting point for beginners. Bear in mind these are basic poses which can have several variants, so it's good to experiment with this as a start, and develop your own from there. Once you've mastered the posing, the next step would be to look at portrait lighting techniques.
It's nice to find poses on the web. It is a big deal for me, thank you very much
Absolutely wonderful starting points for new players or people needing a refresh. Thanks for your contributions, they really help this vast photographic community.
I would love to get this app on my imac! I don't have an ipad or iphone. I would love to see poses for weddings too... and mums/dads/sibblings with babies
@ccting: If you have Microsoft One Note, you can copy and paste almost anything to it. You can make folders for different categories and place posts like this in them. Printing these posts is very easy to do. You can then take your copy with you on a shoot for ideas.
Great series of examples and good to show to the couple before the shoot.
These are great posing diagrams. I'd like to get some ideas of how to pose couples when there's a big height differential. I photographed a couple on the weekend where he was 6'1" and she was 5'4". Those nine inches make some of the above poses unworkable.
I am quite dissapointed that this app only support iPad and Android, how about the desktop Microsoft windows?? I have just lost my Android.. Please enable support for Microsoft OS.. I wish to see the wedding pose..
This is a great example of different poses to consider and is quite a timely post because my new girlfriend and I tried taking some couples shots for the first time and they turned out quite awkward.
I am a beginner photographer and these are great. Love the sketches without all the distracting background of "real" pictures, whoever complained about them should understand that photography is an art form and so the sketches were just fine.
Although someone mentioned the poses seem "old", I have gone on tons of shoots with my best friend (the reason I'm getting into photography) and people LOVE these poses and shots.
One girl even brought a while wedding album of her mother and father and wanted the same type of shots.
Great article and love the line drawings too, this must be the third or forth I'vce seen in this series :)
These posing guides are EXCELLENT! A great help... please keep up the good articles!!!
This is a useful set of posing suggestions, even for rank amateurs. I think these poses will make our family snapshots look more professional.
I liked so much this series that I ended up buying the app at Google Play Store (my first paid app, I have to say). That's an invaluable tool for someone like me, who is just starting as a portrait photographer. Thanks :-)
Hi there, thanks for all kind words, really appreciate it!
And @kat - the app is available for Android, please follow the direct link:
http://market.android.com/details?id=lv.mendo.posingapp
These look like standard engagement shots, very common and used for many, many years, and many of the poses are not very flattering (back angles for head and neck for example, emphasize things like double chins on couples)…I was hoping to find a list of unique poses that are more playful or at least flattering.
Many times when photographing the wedding and I was not really a day I used this kind of inspirational stories. Here I found some new that you will use. Thanks for the article!
This posing series has been absolutely wonderful for a novice photographer as myself. It's given me a starting point to improve my portrait photography and actually get some professional-looking shots. Your sketches are great and encourage each photographer's creativity in using them. (Now I just need to talk one of the kids out of an old iPod so that I can get your app!) Thanks for sharing your work!
Love the 4 articles you have written on posing and this time thought I'd look at purchasing the App, but it's only available for iphone users :( where is the Android version? Would love to see one :D
tips and sketches are amazing once again, thanks so much for sharing!
Desperate to get some similar app on windows phone 7. Even thought about developing one myself but you have to pay Microsoft £100 for a developer account to submit apps. Would be so useful when out even if you know the pose its a handy reference point and can show the model. I often forget my favourite poses when in the field faced with do many things to remember.
I'm really loving all of these samples.... nice work! And some great tips too!
This is a great posing guide. I have a TON of books about posing, but the subjects allways seem to be your fashion model/Hollywood types and of course the scenery is absolutely heavenly. This gets in the way when you are at a simple wedding trying to pose couples. Thank you very much I will definately be printing this out.
Great article! I really was needing some tips on posing. I think all to often we, as photographers, get caught up worrying about lighting and composition and forget the simplicity of a natural, beautiful pose.
Thank you very much!
This is awesome! Thanks man. I have been waiting for this one. I used the one for posing kids and I got some pretty good shots. I think you should take all of your poses and make them into an app. Give all of the ones you have so far our for free and add a bunch extra for ,let's say, 5 bucks ($4.99). It would do well because it's from you guys! Look in to the other apps for posing. They are crappy. contact me for more info :)
These are fabulous! This whole series - poses for women, men, children, and now couples - has been fantastic and so helpful!
What I would love to see now are poses for elderly people. My mother is 83 years old and I want to do a series of photos of her for my family members. Are there any suggestions for poses? I have searched on line and have come up pretty much empty...
Thank you.
Simple and compact. This is basic poses that great to start with and later reproduce other creative pose based on location and situation. Thanks for sharing :)
These are really a nice reference.
http://500px.com/kumar_varun
Thank you so much for posting this! Last evening I was just about to arrange a meeting with a future couple (for a wedding) and practice the Male/Female posing examples. Now I have this 'cheatsheet' which is so useful. I agree that natural and 'unposed' photos are so great, but I think this stage of posed should be learned very well before mastering skills in a very professional manner. Thank you so much
The only thing I ever managed to click in pairs was these Jungle Babblers!
http://blogs.gonomad.com/traveltalesfromindia/2010/11/lazy-sunday-photo-a-cute-pair-of-jungle-babblers.html
I love your guide!! Going get the app now...hope to see seniors and weddings soon.
Catching people when they do not expect it can produce a natural pose and have emotion:
http://wildlifeencounters.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Street-photography-in-Eastbourne/G00004ShZCZqM52A/I0000aV3b5gOJMA4
I was hoping you would continue with this series and include couples. I am planning an engagement shoot for a couple of my friends and this will come in handy.
Love the 'posing' series, but was wondering why you use sketches as opposed to actual photographs? Just seems odd for a photography website. Still very helpful though!
This series of posts is great! Keep on!
I bought a second hand iPod Touch just so I could use this app.
It's handy for when you get stuck or run out of ideas (or are starting out), and you can use it to show clients/models/whatever what you want them to do.
I bought the app last week and will be referencing it this weekend, thanks for sharing!
Charlie
OMG, OMG, Kaspars Grinvalds Thanks thanks thanks thanks very very very very very very much much much... I can't thanks anymore..
This is great. Thanks for posting this.
wow, this is interesting
everytime they show the couples near the tree
this is enlightening
http://raghavendra-mobilephotography.blogspot.com/2012/04/beautiful-lily-flower-in-pond.html
Once again, thanks for the posing articles.
You should do a wedding one next. http://disney-photography-blog.com/