It’s a never-ending question I see on Facebook. It’s a question that I see in almost every single photographer group I have ever been in. “What are your favorite posing resources?” Oh man, guys, have I got a treat for you! I compiled a list of my 3 most favorite, knock your freakin’ socks off, get-amazing-shots-all-the-time posing resources.

When I started this crazy adventure, posing was kind of on the back burner. I, like many people with a camera in hand, thought that I could get some pretty people, tell them to stand in a pretty place, lower my aperture to 1.4, and shoot some awesome portraits. While this was sorta true (to a point), I wasn’t getting any sort of authentic emotions from my clients. They would either stare at each other, or look at me and say “what are we supposed to do?” I always ended up responding with “just look at each other, and be lovey.”

FAIL.

Doesn’t work that way. Now, some of us are SUPER lucky, and get to work with amazing “model” clients. I don’t mean actual models. You know what I’m talking about. Those couples that literally melt into each other arms. The guy takes the girl into his manly arms and holds her like he’s never letting go. Who sniffs her hair as she starts to giggle over her shoulder and you continue to shoot and shoot and shoot until the buffer in your camera gets behind and you remember that you haven’t even said anything in the last 3 minutes.

Yeah….that doesn’t happen to me.

It’s hard to be in front of the camera. If it’s not something you do everyday, it’s kind of terrifying. When your clients get in front of the camera, they can be terrified. Chances are, they ARE nervous. 9 times out of 10, i’ll get a text as i’m on my way to a shoot like “Misty!! We’re so nervous!” And I always be sure to tell them, “HAVE NO FEAR!!!” HA. Easier said than done, amiright?! Posing is hard. And being posed is hard. Because of that, I wanted to be sure I did my due diligence and learned AS MUCH as I could to help my clients get comfortable in front of my camera, and QUICK. I started reading books on posing. That was great, and all, but i’m really more of a hands on learner, so I started writing down what I was reading in books. Again, still wasn’t as helpful. The books I was reading were saying “these are the poses you need to be using! Make sure you use this, and this, and this.” Then I would get to a shoot and end up like a deer staring at the headlights of a semi, and about to squished. What a nightmare.

Then it happened. I found what I had been waiting for my whole life (without even really knowing that I was waiting for it).

Katelyn James’ Posing Course

If you HAVEN’T seen me write about Katelyn James, then you don’t follow me very closely. I LOVE KJ, and I love basically everything that she ever comes out with. Her consistency course, life changing for me. Her branding course with the International Academy of Wedding Photographers, I learned things that I never would have even DREAMED about, which made my re-brand last year about 20,487,349 times easier. The information I have learned from that lady has been GOLD for my business, and when I heard she was going to be offering a posing course, you bet I jumped on that bandwagon.

Katelyn goes over everything from her “base poses” which are super simple, to getting your couples to more “advanced poses.” She broke things down in a way that finally clicked for me! Break things into sets, give you clients time to breathe, and keep talking throughout the session! Oh, and you will have WAY more diversity in your images after implementing the amazing things she teaches you! This is probably one of THE best posing resources that I have found to date.

I do know that Katelyn is ABOUT to have a baby, and I’m not sure when she will be offering this again, but I would recommend to get on her email list to be first in line! You seriously don’t want to miss it.

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Now, I know that some of you are thinking…..

“Misty, but I don’t want to pose my clients.” I get it. There’s times I don’t want to worry about that either, and that brings us to my next posing resource.

Ben Sasso Self-Paced Posing Course

THIS ONE IS AWESOME!!!!! Chances are, you have seen Ben Sasso’s work. If you haven’t, then you need to. He focuses on authentic emotion, and movement, and getting right up into people’s personal spaces with his 35 to create this emotion-filled realness.

MAN! It’s rad.

One of the the best things about this course is that it is self paced. You basically are given notes upon notes upon notes of Ben’s best tips for learning how to “direct” your clients, instead of just posing them. When you start “directing” your clients over posing them, you are able to get more real movement in your images. Images are static. I get that, but I LOVE when I get images that you can almost FEEL the movement in it. Be it the wind in your subjects hair, or the kiss on someone’s shoulder. I want you to FEEL my images. Not just see them. I FREAKIN’ LOVE IT.

*jumps down off her soap box*

I just love Ben’s take on the whole “directing” instead of posing. His biggest tip is to help add movement into what they are doing. Ask them to perform a task, instead of just say “ok, hug and then kiss each other.” That’s boring. We want more authentic moments people. Check this one out for sure! 😀

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This brings me to my last, and posing resource. These may not be my most favorite, but they are definitely the most fun.

UNPOSED by Love Is a Big Deal

Now this is a lot different than the two prior. Instead of an actual course, this one is a field guide!!! You are given 32 cards that are filled with awesome prompts to give your couples. TO what? To get those REAL authentic reactions.

“I think I see a pattern here.”

You do. These cards are one of the funnest things that I do during a session. Some of them a little on the inappropriate side, but with the right clients, they make PERFECT prompts to get those reactions. Most of the time, my clients think i’m just crazy and they look at me like “you want me to do what!?” But the best part about it is they humor me, and then after they see the images say something like “OH MY GOSH! That was so fun! I never would have thought they would have turned out so cute.” That’s literally what a girl told me one.

SO. DANG. FUN.

SO there you go. If you want to get some help with your posing, i’d absolutely recommend those resources. They’re some of the best one’s I have come across TO DATE! 🙂