How to pose photos to look more candid?

“Lifestyle photography. How do you pose things so that they look more candid?”

Dave: Huge thing – no matter who you’re shooting, what age group, whatever it is, I think if there’s people involved, treat them as people, not as subjects. It’s sort of a given, but as photographers we tend to be thinking about our gear and what lens we’re going to use and what the light’s doing and stuff like that – but don’t verbalize that, and really just treat your clients as best you can. That often means sharing a drink. Say if you arrive for a family shoot at someone’s house and they offer you a drink, take it, sit down, don’t bring your camera gear in, get to know them, have them feel comfortable having you in their home long before setting up gear and stuff.

Taylor: Absolutely. I realize that I have a little bit of a warm-up period as far as my creative mind goes, and I will spend most of the first 20 minutes of any shoot just talking with them and maybe snap a few pictures, stop at a few different locations. And as far as my style goes, I just walk around with people. I just pick a nice starting location and whatever we find in the area we find. I don’t really heavily pose anyone, so my candid photos are kind of more candid – or I call it “forced photojournalism”, where it’s like “yeah, just go hang out over there, I’ll tell you if you’re doing something wrong”. And for the most part, people just really embrace that – it’s the type of clients I attract, too; that they know that that’s what it’s going to be, so maybe they’re a little more comfortable in front of the camera. So I just kind of interject things.

Dave: I love how you don’t try to sell it at all – you’re just like “this is going to be really forced, but . . .”

Taylor: Oh, I tell them straight up how awkward it’s going to be. Like, “this is going to be really awkward, I’m going to make everybody just like talk about whatever” and take pictures. The awkwardness of the situation – as long as you present it correctly – will actually result in a lot of really good smiles and people having a good time because of how awkward the situation is, so you’re not just like “so talk”.

Dave: And the awkward kind of turns into laughter after a while, doesn’t it?

Taylor: Yep, because people come up with the randomist stuff – it’s great.

Dave: I was just going to comment on that. So in terms of having people feeling candid as well, I think a great thing to do is –going back to that thing of not worrying about what shots you’re getting – [for the] first, honestly, ten minutes of shooting a portrait session, I literally don’t plan to use a single one of those shots because the clients are going to be most stressed during that first ten minutes, unless you aren’t. If you’re not thinking “okay – I’m connected to trying to get these shots now”, and you know your best stuff’s going to come between ten minutes and the hour, like if you’re doing an hour-long session, it’s all going to come in the second half, right?

Taylor: I have one exception to that – it’s happened to me once. A couple was driving from an hour away to Toronto and I was right in the middle, and they were like “we have half an hour, can we do our engagement session in this half hour?” and I was like, “yeah, that’s fine we’ll just pick an okay location”. And I don’t know – they weren’t that serious, they wanted one photo from it, and it ended up that they were about 20 minutes late. So we had ten minutes to do this photo shoot, and just the amount of compression on the amount of time we had just really made everything click and I got as many photos out of that ten minutes as I typically get out of an hour, and it was just amazing.

I guess it was the couple as well, that they were really aware of their bodies and I didn’t really have to step in and be like, “okay, turn this way a little bit”. And they just kind of rocked it and I laid on the shutter and I took like, 300 photos in ten minutes.