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A Complete Guide to the Basics of Posing for Portrait Photos

Chris Gampat
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03/02/2015
1 Min read

Last Updated on 03/02/2015 by Chris Gampat

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“Rules are made to be broken,” is what Julia Kelleher states in her creativeLive presentation. “Don’t sacrifice connection for posing. ”

She covers lots of the basics like how a 50mm doesn’t work as well an 85mm due to compression, but also talks about angles, focal plane and the rule of thirds. Julia emphasizes how posing has to elicit a connection and uses lots of examples visually such as the focal plane example–which is a huge one!

One of the biggest ones though that you’re bound to learn is the rule of off-set heads and how noses play a big role in posing a family or couples. If you’re looking to just get into portrait photography, the video after the jump is a great primer to the basics of posing for portrait photos that squeezes lots of into 16 minutes.

Basics of Posing for Portrait Photos creativeLive julia kelleher noses nosing portrait portrait photos
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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