Portrait Photography How To

In this clever seven-minute video, New York-based portrait photographer Peter Hurley offers a simple trick to help you create more flattering portraits. With the aid of a few different models he expertly illustrates how the “hold your sub” pose makes your portrait subject instantly appear slimmer. (Spoiler alert: sub does stand for submarine sandwich.)

Hurley shows us how the usual hands on hips with elbows pointing outward pose creates rather unflattering results by making the subject’s body appear wider than it really is. Hurley offers a quick fix, simply altering the pose a bit by bringing the subject’s arms (and elbows) in close to the body and that small change immediately produces an amazing difference by streamlining the body and making the neck appear longer. 

"Rid yourself of the 10 extra pounds the camera is said to add with this simple move," Hurley notes in the YouTube decription of the video, which is embedded below.