(calm instrumental music)
- Hi, my name is Miguel Quiles.
I'm a Sony artisan of imagery.
In this video, you'll learn about
working with your subjects to post them.
When you're posing your subjects, I have come up with
a simple process to be able to pose the subject
without actually having to physically touch them,
and it's something that, number one, makes the subject
much, much more comfortable.
Number two, it makes the flow of the shoot
go so much faster.
Rather than having to stop and position and move the model,
and they start to feel uncomfortable
because they feel like their natural movements are not
pleasing to the camera, you can actually pose a model
without actually physically touching them,
and I'm gonna show you how easy this is.
The first thing that I do is I tell the model this story.
I tell them, "The very first thing I want you to do,"
and I'll tell you, as my model.
You guys can follow along at home
and pretend like I am posing you as my subject.
I will tell you, "I want you to pretend like"
"you are looking in the mirror," and so,
if you were looking into the mirror, and I tell you,
"I want you to mirror me, and I want you to do this," right?
Are you guys doing that at home?
All right, you're mirroring me?
Great, I want you to go like this, right?
I want you to go like that.
I want you to go like this.
I want you to go like that,
and so I could tell you very easily, I could say
"I want you to go this way."
"I want you to bring the shoulder up."
"I want you to bring it back, bring the hand up."
If you mirror me, I can get you to do
any type of pose just by telling you,
"You're looking in the mirror."
"I'm your reflection."
"Mirror me."
So that's the first thing.
That's how I can get them to look one way, look the other,
tell them to put their hands by their side, go like this.
I could do all sorts of different positions
just by telling them to mirror me.
The second thing that I do is what I call my Jedi Claw,
and so if I put my hand up like this,
I want you to pretend like I am palming your face
like a basketball, so I have my hand, so it's like this,
palming your face, and I tell you, "Go like this,"
"or go like this," and what I'm doing is,
it's gonna tilt the head this way,
or tilt the head that way, and very quickly and easily
I could tell you, "Okay, we're gonna put the two together."
"I want you to mirror me."
"Go like this, perfect."
"I want you to tilt the head this way, perfect."
So there's the second step.
We have the Jedi Claw.
First step is mirror.
The next thing that I do is what I call
the old Bill Clinton.
If I put my thumb like this, or put my hand like this,
I want you to pretend like I am holding just your chin,
and when I do this, and I tilt, go this way, right,
so I'm gonna go that way, or this way, or down, or up.
Then, the harder movement,
and I always have to explain this to them.
I'll turn sideways so you can see it.
If I tell the model, if I bring my thumb closer to my face,
what I want them to do is to do this.
I want them to basically turtle,
and what that's gonna do is,
and I'll show the camera here directly.
If I'm looking at the camera, this is natural for me.
This is comfortable.
This probably gives me kind of a chunky chin right now,
but if I go like this, all of a sudden,
the skin gets kind of tight.
Now, all of a sudden, I have a more defined jawline.
I look slimmer, and so there will be certain times
when I want them to look a little bit thinner,
and I just pull their chin forward towards me,
bring it down, over, right, up, or down.
So the old Bill Clinton, we have the claw,
the Jedi Claw, we have the mirroring.
The last part is, if I put both of my hands up like this,
I want you to pretend like I am holding your,
or I'm touching your shoulders, so if I push this way,
what I want you to do is to rotate this way,
or rotate this way, so we push that way,
and we push this way, and that way,
if I get them into a pose, putting it all together,
I tell them, "Mirror me."
"Go like that, perfect."
"I want you to go ahead"
"and tilt the head this way, perfect."
"Bring the chin this way, great,"
and then I'm gonna push the shoulder back,
so push it this way, boom, and then I go ahead
and I start taking my shots from there.
Very quick, very easy way, and the other thing is,
you can do this with groups of people.
You can have two or three people, and you can say,
"Okay, person number one, go like this," boom, perfect.
Go to the next person, boom, boom, boom.
Go ahead and pose them, come back,
and start taking your shots.
You can even do this at a distance.
I've done this on location in photo shoots
where I'm trying to take a shot
that encompasses the whole environment,
and they could be standing 10, 15, 20 feet away,
and I tell them to mirror me,
and I can get them to pose exactly the way
that I want them to pose within that environment,
so use this as a way to be able to quickly pose your models,
and to get that perfect pose
without having to really fidget and fight with it too much.
Let's see, so your hair's on that side,
so I want you to mirror this way, perfect.
Throughout that entire process,
you have to make sure that you are letting that model know,
"You're doing a great job, fantastic."
"That's exactly what I wanted."
"I want you to turn the head this way, perfect,"
"and bring that shoulder, yeah, just like that."
You have to communicate with them.
You can't just assume that they know
that they're doing a really good job
throughout that process, so as I'm telling them to pose,
and to mirror me, and doing the Jedi Claw thing,
"Perfect, that looks great."
"Then, go ahead and turn this way, fantastic."
You have to let them know that they are doing a good job
because, again, that's gonna help you
to get to that hero shot much, much faster.
If you haven't tried this before, give it a try.
You're gonna notice that you're gonna get better shots,
better portraits much faster
by encouraging them throughout this entire posing process.
In this video, you learned about
working with your subjects to pose them.