Customer Reviews

The Portrait Photographers Posing Guide: How to pose people for portraits

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Portrait Photographers Posing Guide by Nigel Holmes is a little gem of a book (122 pages, about 5"x8") for novice portrait photographers.

It includes posing suggestions for groups, families, couples, individuals, men, women, children, and babies. It includes poses that are formal and informal. It includes suggestions for problem areas (for example, big chins, reflections off glasses) and for posing hands (10 pages!). What I really like is the four easy steps to create a head and shoulders portrait.

At the end of the book is a section with more poses:
- ideas for men (13 poses)
- ideas for women (27 poses)
- ideas for mother and children (3 poses)
- ideas for families (3 poses)
- ideas for couples (20 poses)

The book focuses on posing and does not address other portrait topics like equipment or lighting.

A book on posing but contains no photographs? That's right! All the illustrations are cartoons, and the cartoons work surprisingly well.

Criticisms (for which I deducted one star): The book is self-published and shows it. There is no table of contents. The index is poor (for example, the topic of "noses" is found at the entry "A Good Nose"). There are no chapters. There is no apparent organization.

I like this book better than professionally-published books (such as "Master Posing Guide for Portrait Photographers" by J.D. Wacker, 8.5"x11", beautiful color portaits throughout--a book I also own) because this book is simple, easy to grasp, and states specific things to do.

The book does not provide information about the author. Based on the fact that the publisher is "Nigel Holmes Enterprises" in England, he is probably a British glamor photographer, not to be confused with another Brit with the same name who is a graphic designer.

This is a marvelous little book. I wanted to do some portrait photography but didn't know where to start. After reading this well written and well ilustrated book I was given a huge amount of information.
If you want to know how to pose people either individually or in groups this book will give you an enormous amount of information in a short time.

Buy it it's worth a read.

The book doesn't get into advance posing details, but is great for the beginning photographer who has no idea how to pose. It's also a very easy read.

Want a handy little guide to help with posing? This one fills the bill. Through the use of cartoon drawings, principles are simplified to help the beginner, or remind the more experienced photographer. The bottom line is that this book is small and simplified enough to go with you and use on the fly.

If you want to go to the next step, I recommend Jeff Smith's book, Posing Techniques for Location Portrait Photography.

Great helpful little book . great for photographers with no experience
in posing people....Good to have handy...

This is a very detailed, very informative book. I had wished there was real pictures for illustrations, but i can see why it is a lot easier to use drawings, and drawings can illustrate a point more precisely. I will be refeencing this book a lot in the future.

this is a very practical book, basic, simple but to the core. will recommend it to who wish to expand their knowledge in studio photography (baby, weddings, portraits etc).

The whimsical writing and illustration style make this an easy and quick read. The thorough content and excellent suggestions ensure that I will keep this handy reference in my camera bag on all portrait shoots.

Easy to digest and very helpful. I think the layout and organization was brilliant! It's nice to have great info, but it's even nicer to really be able to take it all in!

When I was first searching for a book, I wanted something that showed me a lot of photos ... I'm glad I got this instead because all the details that come from photos could distract from what I was really after: learning how to pose! (I'm a sucker for getting lost in the eyes, figuring out the lighting techniques, etc.)

Great purchase!

When I first saw this book I thought a posing book full of cartoons could not be very good. I was wrong, this book is very effective at showing posing and has plenty of tips too. Well indexed. Dollar for dollar the best posing book I have. I also have traditional photographic posing books, but this book packs in way more useful information in a small package.