Positioning and Emotion

Master non-verbal communication

90% of human communication is non-verbal. For someone who captures images of people that's really good news. I can effectively convey to my audience a feeling or emotion with poses and positioning. 

In the above examples you can see that by changing my positioning I've completely changed the mood of both images. I've also changed the lighting to emphasize the pose, and implied emotion. 

For the more sensual pose shot in landscape, I've created hard shadows with my light. For the more aggressive pose shot in portrait I've lightened the image by reducing my shadows and pulling the light more in front of my subject. I feel by doing this I've made my primary subject Margaret appear to be in control in both images regardless of the positioning. 

It helps when setting up your shot to know what feeling your attempting to translate with your image and to effectively communicate that to your subject. I always show a couple of frames to my model so that she or he can see what it is that they're doing and how it's translating to the end result. I know a lot of photographers tend to shy away from this practice but I want to build confidence in both my subjects performance and my ability to make them shine in the final image. I want everyone to feel confident in what we're doing because when everyone feels good about what's going on we all preform better. 

I also tend to build mood boards with images that convey my intended emotional content. This helps me visualize what I'd like to create, and assists in showing my subject what it is that we're going to attempt to photograph emotionally. 

Have fun finding things you like and combining light and poses to create different emotions in your compositions. Don't be afraid to try a couple of different things to see what works best for what you'd like to accomplish, and experiment! I wouldn't recommend replicating images, but finding your own voice and creating unique original content! 

Pictured is Margaret Sinarath
with Wehmann Models MPLS
and RB's arm.... 
MUA Angela Morris
Shot with my 85mm 1.8 and Nikon D610
ISO 100, f/16, 1/100s
Light modifier 16" beauty dish with sock on boom lit by AlienBees B800 at 1/2 power