Today, I'm going to show you how I coach my subjects to create natural hand poses. We all know that posing hands can be extremely difficult and a lot of people are just plain awkward, even if you coach and you give them directions that the hands just don't look good. So I want to share with you three different approaches that I take to bring the best out of my subject to help direct them and get the hands looking beautiful.
👉 Coach Movement
If I ask my subject just to place their hand next to their face it often it looks a little bit forced, a little bit unnatural. Instead, I might say, can you take your middle finger, trace it around the outside of your face and bring your wrist around, and so what that will do is it will actually make far more believable and more pleasing results.
Same thing if I asked my subject to put their hands towards their chest. a lot of times it's very awkward and it doesn't look beautiful, but if I asked them to drag their middle finger across their clavicle, it's far more elegant results.
👉 Releasing Tension
Perhaps you try the movement approach and they bring their hand around, but the hands still look stressed and rigid, a lot of people are nervous during their portrait sessions and they actually show that tension in their hands. So what I'll do is I'll get the hand roughly where I want it, and then I'll tell them to wiggle their fingers to feel the tension, leaving their fingers, wiggle them and set them back down and a lot of times just that little tweak is going to make a vast improvement.
👉 Using Phrases
I'll often use phrases to get my subjects in the right state of mind and articulate what feeling I'm going for. For example, sometimes I'll say use ballet fingers or ballet hands, because they can start to picture what a ballet dancer would have for their hands. It wouldn't be tense fingers. It wouldn't be right angles, instead it would be soft, long lines, elegant positions of the wrists etc and even if they're not a dancer, they can envision what I mean by that.
What I find this really useful for is that if I'm doing something that's maybe a little bit more creative with the position of the hand instead of just the hand next to the face. ,
So the next time that you are posing your subject and you can't seem to get those hands posed correctly -- first, try coaching them with some movement, then try to get them to relax, release tension and finally give them some cues, some phrases to put them into the right state of mind.
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📢 What have you found to be helpful to coach hand poses? Do you have any tips, tricks or phrases you want to share? Let’s help each other out! Drop a comment below. 👇
If you've found this video helpful, I have an entire posing series dedicated to the ins and outs and the essentials of posing any subject:
✅ Posing Series:
✅ Posing Cards:
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