Styling People: The Hardest Challenge
Before watching the video in this lesson, please note that the content comes from my experience photographing real people. My subjects/clients often ask me, only half-joking, to “Photoshop them to look [X],” such as “skinnier,” “not so overweight,” and so on. Thus, some of what I teach in this lesson are methods to “appear more proportional,” or to “hide problem areas” or to “look less heavy.” In no way do I want to body-shame anyone watching this lesson. I have publicly shared my thoughts on body positivity and how being a photographer can be tough because my subjects so often view themselves in a distorted way (this post on Instagram is a good example). I worked hard to both meet the demand I see for looking one’s healthiest and best in images as well as maintain my stance that no body type is “bad” or “wrong.” I use myself as an example so that you, my students, know that I too have things that make me self-conscious; after all, we’re all human and we all play the comparison game. I ask as you view this video to please hear any imperfectly-PC commentary in the context in which it is provided, as well as in the context that I am a photographer who hears requests every week for images that boost my clients’ self-perception. This topic is a tough one.
Styling People—the Hardest Challenge of All!
If I’m going to let down my teacher-student guard for a second, and speak like we’re just two friends sitting across from one another at coffee—I decided very quickly after launching my photography business that I needed to be a commercial photographer and not a family photographer, wedding photographer, or really any type of photographer who needed to be able to style lots of people at one time for a photo. Why? Because people are HARD to photograph! One or two personalities at a time was more than enough for me.
Today, I love photographing one, two, or even three at once because I’ve learned how to use people in images to tell a greater story. I’m still not a family or wedding photographer (big groups scare me to this day), but when it comes to getting those people shots that will captivate on social, I’m your gal!
Now, the first trick to styling people for commercial (brand) images is this: Know whether the person is the star of the story (aka your subject), or if a product is.
Here are some images that demonstrate what I mean:
In these two examples, the product is really the thing you want viewers to remember. The first post is what is known as a gallery post on Instagram. (I am constantly encouraging my subscription clients to use this feature for their product-based businesses.) For product-based sponsored posts, a gallery is a great way to garner engagement, because in the first image (as above), you can place the face of the person everyone following that account cares about (in the above case, Jaci Marie Smith), and in the second image, you can draw attention to the product they’re promoting for a separate brand. Notice how the hierarchy changes between the two images in this post—in the first, we notice Jaci first, and the product second; in the second image, we notice the product first, and Jaci second.
The second example above is a single image that I shot for a brand called Roses & Azalea, a clean-beauty brand. In this image, I really did want people to notice the healthy, young professional in the image that embodies so much of what many of us what to achieve (clear skin, a toned physique, a relaxed energy, and natural beauty). However, I wanted it to be clear that that person was fascinated by the product—a deodorant with only ingredients in it that she could pronounce and recognize. While I probably could have come in a little tighter to really make the product the focal point, overall this image achieved what I wanted it to: It told the story that this was a product that health-conscious people are excited about.
You can also think of people as a straight-up prop—a way to add a human element to something that’s interesting to encounter in real life with a friend, but not so interesting to photograph all on its own.
A common example of this is when we come across messages on sidewalks, etched in tile, etcetera, or we come across amazing street art and murals, but it can also just be an interesting piece of architecture or nature.
In these cases the subject is almost always the thing that isn’t a person, and we simply “inject” the person to make it feel more like the viewer is encountering it in real life, with a friend, while out on their daily adventures. It’s helpful in these situations to include only part of the person, and not their whole body, to make it clear that the subject is something other than the person.
The next thing that we want to remember when taking photos of people is that to make the photo interesting, there has to be a story. A reason for people to care.
Coming from the place of a photographer, I know dozens of photographers whose social accounts never grow beyond the number of people they work with because the photos they share on social media, while beautiful, are just full of people who are strangers to all the people who could be following them online. Right? If you go to a photographer’s profile, usually it’s just photo after photo of faces you personally don’t know and are likely never to meet—couples in love, families huddled together under a cozy plaid flannel blanket in a field, etcetera. So why should you care? Why should you comment, like, or follow? If there’s no story, there’s no reason to subscribe.
Take the two examples above of how to do photos right. In the first example, the account owner, Josie, has cut out all distractions by placing herself against the “blank” backdrop of the sky, and she holds up a handmade reminder to VOTE. The simplicity of her message makes it easy to take in, and may be so simple in fact that it makes you want to read her caption to find out more. (Most people who “engage” with your content will do so without ever reading your caption, so it’s important that your image tells a story all by itself.) In other words, she prompts her viewers to care.
In the second example, Sarah Patrick holds out a board of fall goodies as leaves fall around her. She’s making eye contact with the camera, as though welcoming you to whatever party she’s hosting. While at first you might not see the message as clearly as you do in Josie’s image, actually there is a story here, a reason to care; Sarah is inviting YOU to be a part of what’s happening in her life, right now.
Carefully considering your angle options is also key to awesome photos of people. We tend to accidentally fall into a pattern of photographing people on the ground, at eye level, which isn’t always the best way to captivate.
We can photograph people from above, below, a steep side angle or a reflective surface; we can pose them on their backs or looking down from above or over glancing their shoulder. There are so many more opportunities when photographing people than simply having them standing or sitting or leaning against a wall.
Often by changing the angle we’re shooting from, we also can add motion to an image (such as the hair tumbling down through the monkey bars in the image above) eliminate distractions (such as adding motion blur to the background or placing our subject against a blank sky), or fill the frame (as with the pumpkin image of two friends above; if they were simply sitting with their pumpkins, we’d have the ground and the sky and anything else in the background; but the way they are, the entire frame is filled edge-to-edge with pumpkins).
An added benefit of finding a creative angle can be involving the subject in the creative process. If it’s easier to envision what the two of you are trying to accomplish as photographer and subject, then it can be easier to think of fun poses to try, as well as to relax and stop thinking about the camera being trained on you if you’re the subject and more about making the final image come out “right.”
That said, we’re all a little concerned about posing—we want to know what to do with our hands, how to look our most healthy and strong, and often too our most beautiful—so I’ve got some insight here, as well.
First super easy way to remember to mix up your poses, whether you’re a photographer directing a subject or you’re the subject yourself, is to create triangles with your body. (Courtney Michelle, below, is a master of this.) Basically this means doing bold, deliberate bends of your arms and legs so that you create lots of movement in the image. Examples include standing on one leg with the other leg bent and leaning against the leg you’re balancing on (like tree pose in yoga), or bending an elbow to rest your hand on your waist or your head:
My next thought is that we often think we need the person we’re photographing to be looking right at the camera, and that’s not true. (If you’re being photographed, it’s easy to assume you should look at the camera, and that’s not true.) Eye-contact images are great for #fridayintroductions, headshots on your website, or press photos, but they’re not always great for social media.
Here are several examples of excellent images where the person in the image is not looking at the camera:
I want to point out here, too, that where the human prop is looking can help support the story you’re trying to tell. An obvious way is that if the person is looking at a product that the image is promoting, where the person is looking is where we as viewers of the image are likely to look; but a less obvious way can be illustrated in the final example above. The image was created to promote some scrunchies that would be included in a sustainable subscription box. If the woman in the photo was making eye contact with the camera/viewer of the image, all we’d notice is her. But because she’s not making eye contact with us, our eyes roam the image, and we immediately discover that this girl has multiple scrunches on her arms, and we realize that’s what this image is about.
My last tip here (because there’s a lot more inside the video at the top of this lesson) is to focus on things the person loves about themselves, if they are the subject, rather than trying to cover up or avoid photographing the things they don’t love. If they love their eyes or their smile, get images that zero right in on the eyes, or as many images as possible where the person is smiling and laughing.
Before we sign off, I also want to address wardrobe. The way we dress for images profoundly impacts the way we perceive the final results.
One of the things I mention in the video lesson about wardrobe is that as subjects choosing our own outfits, we’re often tempted to wear loose-fitting clothing—whether this is because we feel self-conscious about our bodies and wish to hide them, or because we see influencers online wearing “flowy” clothing and we want to achieve that look.
I wanted to provide some examples of what this looks like—both in terms of the kinds of images I’m referring to, as well as what our eyes perceive versus the reality of what’s in the images.
In the two images above, we see images that tell the story, “I just tossed this outfit on and I look fabulous.” Something we all want, right? To be able to “just throw something on,” and look chic.
The “I just threw this on” look is often characterized by something that feels oversized—such as a loose-fitting sweater or flowing cape or scarf. It’s the thing we notice in the image, because it’s the thing providing the most “motion,” which by nature draws our eye.
However, often in the image the subject is wearing a lot of form-fitting or elongating clothing that offsets the “flowy,” loose-fitting article of clothing. In the examples above, the first woman is wearing leggings; her bare ankles are showing (so there’s no added “padding” from clothing); and it looks like even her top under her coat is made of thin material and hugs her body (we don’t get the impression that she’s wearing a chunky sweater under that coat because the sleeves aren’t bulging). So we notice the coat and scarf, but we know the real size of the subject because she offsets the coat and scarf with articles that reveal her true shape.
In the second image, the model’s hair is actually “flowy,” accentuating the flowiness of her oversized sweater. So we think of her as wearing a loose-fitting, “just threw this on” outfit. BUT. She’s also wearing skinny jeans and heels, and she’s formed a triangle with her limbs—all of which elongate her body and offset the chunkiness of her sweater.
It’s important to know this both as a subject and as a stylist, because normally, if you put someone in flowy, oversized clothing, they’ll just look bigger overall in the image. It’s the more form-fitting pieces that make them look proportional.
See if you can now see this phenomenon in all the following images, as well:
I’ve got even more examples (unfortunately many of the ones I wanted to use here aren’t embeddable) on this Pinterest board.
Another helpful hint when planning wardrobe for shoots is to accessorize. You can always eliminate accessories that don’t work, but it’s hard to add accessories in that can help if you don’t have them. Belts can cinch in waists on loose clothing to create more negative space between your arms and your torso; wide-brimmed hats can make your shoulders and hips appear narrower; long jackets can help cover the hip-thigh “problem area” if you or your subject is self-conscious about it; boots with heels can elongate the legs; necklaces can add a “V” shape that accentuates the natural womanly form; elastics and bobby pins to put the hair up can make the neck look longer and leaner… and so on and so on.
As noted in the video above, everything I’ve shared here is to provide a good foundation for photos of people—whether you’re looking to get better photos of yourself, or you’re a brand photographer looking to get more photos per session that your clients love. However, what camera you’re using, what angles you shoot from, light, and other factors can affect your outcome, as well, and learning to really ramp up your stylization of images is a big factor, as well. So first, be sure that you’ve watched all the lessons up to this point, and ask yourself with each one, “How could I apply these principles to people images?” (Maybe not the Spiral Staircase lesson, but the other lessons.) And then stay tuned for the BONUS lesson at the end about helping other people take better photos of YOU (this will be in both the Sally and Eva bonus lessons).
Hello there! I’m your hostess, Alexis.
I’m the Original Subscription Photographer (& photo stylist) for creative professionals. I run my business in Portsmouth, NH. I’m super pumped to have you here!