Portrait Photography How To

Up-and-coming portrait photographers are always looking for models to photograph to expand their portfolios. But what if you can’t afford a professional model? Fear not, the next best thing to hiring a model is to have your friends pose for you for free.

But getting friends to pose the right way can be a challenge because, of course, they aren’t professional models. That why portrait photography tutorials like the one below from photographer Sheldon Evans are so helpful. In the video, titled “How to Pose Your Friends Like Models,” Evans gives you five tips to get your friends posing like pros.

“One of the things I struggled with most when I started photography was figuring out how to pose the people in front of my lens because when you first start out it's difficult to find professional models to work with who know how to strike a new pose with every click of the shutter button,” Evans explains. “So, what ends up happening is you use your friends as models, but the only problem with that is...that they aren't actually models so it's up to you to know how to pose them. As a beginner in photography that can be quite difficult.”

That’s why Evans came up with the following tips for posing friends, which he explains in the video:

1. Pose and Then Build

2. Awkward Hands

3. Actions and Emotions

4. Communicate

5. Wardrobe

Speaking of posing, you also check out this video with some of the tricks the pros use to pose people so they look better in portraits, and this video with 3 simple tips on how to teach a friend to pose like a pro. Here are some examples of what happens when posing goes wrong.

Watch more of Evans’ great tutorials on his YouTube channel.