3 Quick Tips for Posing Brides in Wedding Photos

Photography Tips  •  Wedding Photography

Wedding photography is a dedicated focus. One that requires good personable skills and a certain finesse for working with a wide variety of people on their special day. Anger, frustration, happiness… these are just a few of the many emotions you’re bound to run into. However, the most important thing to prepare for is the bride worrying about her appearance. To help keep your bride happy (and to create more natural and slender poses), New Jersey based wedding photographer Vanessa Joy offers these three quick and easy tips:

1. Use the Mirror Me Approach

Using fellow wedding photographer Catherine Guidy as a model, Joy starts the tutorial using the tried and true ‘Mirror Me’ approach. This simple method has the bride mimicking your actions to help them understand your gestures. As you progress with your sessions, at some point your clients will no longer need the verbal messages, and you can typically correct simple issues with a few small hand, head, or body gestures.

2. Know How to Pose

Posing is one of the easiest ways to minimize specific areas of the body. For instance, use the lean. Leaning away from the camera is a great way to minimize your hips and create a nice waistline. To accomplish this, have your bride put one foot slightly forward, then have her lean back slightly against her back foot.

Canon 1DX, 1/800, f/1.2, ISO 400, 50mm

3. Work with the Trends

While facing the camera dead on is a current trend in wedding photography, it isn’t always the easiest to work with. To master this technique, you first need to ensure your bride doesn’t appear flat-footed. This can easily be achieved using a little lean to one side; then you need to separate the body and minimize the arms by having the bride make a slight bend in the elbow, while keeping a good distance between her arms and waist.

Throughout this quick tutorial, Vanessa Joy provides us with a few quick tips and tricks for mastering common bridal shots in wedding photography. Use your poses to minimize problem areas, work with common trends, use the ‘Mirror Me’ approach whenever you’re in doubt, and have fun with your bride. Try something new, or create a sense of movement, but most of all, avoid having the bride standing still in every photograph.

“Every bride, (I don’t care how beautiful she is or how skinny she is, always thinks she looks fat, so you want to make sure we eliminate that problem.” –Vanessa Joy’s thoughts on the biggest tip to remember for wedding photography