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Obsessed with Detail - part 4 of 1 2 3 4 5

by Gordon McGowan Published 01/01/2014

Mastering the pose

Gordon's second Superclass, 'Creating the Pose,' takes place two days later on the Sunday, and essentially it's a continuation of the same theme. Here the emphasis will be on setting up poses where every detail has been thought through carefully, and Gordon will be working with a bridal couple and breaking down the pose in an easy, step-by-step fashion so that delegates will be able to photograph every part of the creation of the pose and will also have a good first-hand idea about the details that have gone into the final image.

"I won't be standing up in front of everyone and telling them how to do things," says Gordon. "Rather I'll get the delegates themselves to come up and set up the poses, and then I'll show them how it might be improved. There are a lot of rules to follow in terms of how you set a pose up. For example, if you bring the couple's heads together, you need them to have the same expression: they can either both look serious or both be smiling but you can't mix and match and have one smiling and one not. The looks should match the scene as well. With a formal portrait, for example, sometimes smiling or laughing could look wrong while in a more informal setting it might be essential."

Small details can make or break a pose. When a couple kiss, for example, many photographers will opt for a full meeting of the lips, but Gordon considers that often the sensual power of the image is far stronger if the lips are a small distance apart and the viewer is left to anticipate the kiss that is about to take place. If there is going to be contact then Gordon prefers to ask the bride to turn her head slightly so that groom kisses her on the cheek rather than the lips so that her face can still be seen by the camera.

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1st Published 01/01/2014
last update 09/12/2022 14:57:02

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