In this episode of ReDefine
I speak with celebrated wedding photographer and author Roberto
Valenzuela.
Who demonstrates for us his take on posing techniques.
Adorama TV presents
the reDefine show with Tamara Lackey, bringing fresh ideas
and equipment favourites. You can check out much more content with photographers
by watching Adorama TV.
Hi this is Tamara Lackey for the reDefine show for Adorama TV.
In today's episode Roberto Valenzuela demonstrates for us his take on posing.
Explaining why it's less about memorization and more about body
language and energy.
Enjoy.
I am sitting here with Roberto Valenzuela,
in Las Vegas and you just had a brand new book released correct? Sure did super
excited two years in the making
so I'm glad to be done with it. Yes and you've been done pretty recently .
Like it launched , like right now. Wonderful.
Like right now, it's launching. It's like at we're recording this is like off
the press.
Tell us a little bit about it? Yeah sure I mean,
I find that people keep having trouble posing all over the world.
Everywhere I go.
And I figured the way we learn about posing must be wrong,
because everybody is having problems with it. Right if they weren't doing it wrong you wouldn't
have to step up. I was like dude something's happening here somebody has to make
something you know.
So it came from the fact that people kept memorizing poses as a
way to study poses.
Right. They try to guess poses when they were trying to pose people,
and that method of memorizing or guessing just wasn't happening.
Right because the same poses don't work for different people. Right, the other method was
memorizing like tips and tricks about posing.
And that wasn't working either because there's like a million of them.
So
I rewrote the whole thing and I was like let's slow down let's figure out what's
happening here.
Settle down people. It's like let's all calm down.
Got it. And I said what is really posing about? Posing happens to be about
energy their body language.
It has a body language, like when you pose someone it has a body language to
it.
Correct. It can be energetic, it can be glamorous, it can be seductive, it can be
angry, it can be aggressive, it can be whenever you want.
You can also emphasize whatever part of the body you want using the hands.
Right. So I wrote this book, Picture Perfect Posing,
to clearly understand the mechanics and the energy of posing. So you can build
poses from the ground up, instead of guessing poses.
Instead of memorizing poses, instead of
just not knowing what you're doing. So it's like the why behind the posing so
instead of just like,
memorizing tips and stuff but you don't really know why
it's happening. I wrote this book to explain to you why you do what you do.
So it's exciting. So being here now published author
more than once. Uno dos . Teaching,
shooting, getting a lot of respect from the industry.
What would you say you've done right to get here?
Honestly I took a chill pill.
Like I relaxed about it you know.
Like when things were going good I didn't get to like, oh my god things are going good
I don't have to work anymore.
Like I decided to stay passionate you know,
and I know that sounds cliche but I never stop
trying to learn. And I never stop trying to
I want to know everything about everybody. So like you are an amazing
portrait artist and i wanna know everything about you, so I keep asking
questions you know.
I keep asking photographers about what they do and what they do best so I can
learn.
I wanna pick everybody's brain and just like be like this computer server of
everybody's information,
you know and I love it. And then I do this fun stuff at my house where every week
I do some
some practice session of some sort, and I try to practice a technique, and
I practice stuff that I wouldn't do normally at job, and I try to push the
limits of stuff and I'm just kinda like a child you know
it's like a very immature child just playing with toys. You are like a child
Yeah. People spend time with you there like he's so cute. Yeah.
I am a child and I love it.
It's like a child is always curious to learn. Absolutely.
If you keep that up or if that's not in you anymore. It's a sad day for you.
It's over. Yeah well creativity springs
so much from that open energy that see in children. And I'm curious to be honest with
you. I'm curious I wanna know how
certain people do certain things. I don't know everything about everything,
but I want to know as much as I possibly can, and I try to learn and then I
experiment, I learn and then I experiment.
And then you know as I grow in the industry, I didn't let me get my head
either.
like I stayed chilled, and I realised that you're helping people, and you're helping
people pay their bills for their families.
And I i think that's an honor and I take education seriously because
people don't make their money easily. You know it doesn't grow on tree's.
So if you wanna go into any kind of educational
route towards me for me. Workshops or so
you can find that at pictureperfectpractice.com again that's picture
perfect practice .com which is the title of my first book
and you'll find wedding evolution there, posing evolution there, links to my
two books,
and a link to all of my workshops in the United States, and also to my workshops
all over the world.
So pictureperfectpractice.com
So let's go watch you shoot right now.
This is Tammy lackey be sure to check out Adorama's latest contest to win
some fabulous prizes.
Thanks so much Roberto that was really helpful.
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