When you’re photographing someone or a team for business purposes, how do you interact with them? Do you spend time trying to put them at ease, ask how they want to be portrayed, or just say “stand here, lean back, look here. YES YOU’RE KILLING IT!”? I got professional headshots done by my company with some team photos and I hate how I look in all of them. The headshots I though would be chest up so I didn’t pose my lower half or I was told to pose a certain way and it looks awful. I’ve seen the other’s photos and they look natural and relaxed. I look awkward and rigid. The photographer said maybe 4 sentences in all 5 photos for how I should stand and none look good. I’ve never had photos taken of me outside of school pictures and I really tried with posing tutorials beforehand so I was excited. Was this the norm for team type shoots or do others do this differently? What could I have done differently as a subject to get the most out of a rushed session?
For boudoir work, I generally engage them in conversation and suddenly they realize they’re a lot better at posing than they thought they were. But that’s over the course of an hour or more, I couldn’t imagine trying to get 5 headshots right with that alone.
Similar to how I do portraits – though more as a hobby and not professionally so limited experience. If you just point a camera and have them say cheese, you’ll get something artificial that looks forced. If you engage them in playful conversation punctuated by a little guidance, you get much more natural and compelling photos with more confidence without the forced/awkward smiles of someone staring dead-eyed directly into the lens.
Ultimately, it’s about making them feel comfortable, and the hard part really is just that there’s no one-size-fits all guide for that because like walking up to someone in public and having a conversation with them, some people are more willing to engage and others will be extremely apprehensive and you have to tilt your dynamic differently depending on which kind of person you’re working with.
In any case, no formula exists to work with anyone other than to be a good human being as you would with someone on the street and make it as natural as possible rather than cold and calculated.