At a loss on how to pose your male models for full-body portrait shoots? This photography cheat sheet has some simple suggestions to get you started.
You can often get away with straightforward poses for close-ups, and half-body shots when photographing male models. But when it comes to full body portraits, natural-looking poses can be challenging, especially when you’re new to it. With this photography cheat sheet, however, you’ll have a bunch of poses to experiment with for your next portrait practice.
The portrait posing guide below was put together by PhotoPlus, a sister title of Digital Camera World. The nine poses provide instant inspiration if you’re looking for quick and simple poses for a male model. If you’re feeling creative, you might want to make your own variations of the poses as well.
The poses range from simple to dynamic and playful, so you have different options based on the mood you’re going for. You might want to try the simple poses first as a “warm-up” for the shoot, making slight variations before you progress to other poses. Or, as the cheat sheet suggests, you might be in a playful mood, so you can go for the fun (or “silly” even) poses first for a relaxed start to the shoot. Each of the poses also comes with their own “top tip” to help you get the best results. Feel free to use props, but also keep in mind not to force poses that look unnatural. When shooting variations, experiment with different angles as well, like shooting from a slightly lower angle to create a more powerful look.
Once you’re done with this portrait photography cheat sheet, you may also want to check out nine more poses that work great for both males and females.