Posing for the Camera

A professional guide for the creative model, director, photographer and others...

WHAT IS A POSE?

It is not possible to be entirely precise, for definitions vary, the meanings change with the times and a good deal of healthy controversy exists.

The dictionary says it is, first, a position of the body... an attitude. Its secondary meanings, however, have negative connotations of artificial appearance - placing or putting, mere affectation, pretense, rigid stance, etc.

The modernist winces and avoids its use, for photography has advanced with the speed of its lenses and films and left the word pose - as it maintains inflexibly its old meaning - draining life and vitality out of action.

Although, we too, must use the word - we ask you to accept it in its new and broadest sense. Pose (or Posing) today includes something more basic, a state of composure, balance ... poise before the camera.

A pose may be deliberately assumed with gestures and attitudes designedly adapted to mood or position... yet that does not preclude candidness.

The manner is which the body achieves a position before the camera (the action can be as candid or deliberate as you please) is posing in the modern sense, and the state in which it is recorded (in either poised consciousness or oblivion to the camera) is the pose.