Why is it, if you look up portraiture or glamor on the net all you find is female examples??? I need to know about male portraiture. Posing etc. When I try to find it, I run into all kinds of porno stuff. I am not interested in the "male form" or artsy nudes. I just want posing techniques and stuff you would see in GQ or other types of mags... Please help!!!! Thanks Jane

-- jane (jmngold@aol.com), September 18, 2000

Answers

I imagine that there will be people more informed than me on formal portraiture along soon, so I'll keep it short. It might be good to go back to good old dead trees here. If you have a good full-service photography store near you, they should have texts that will help. Libraries, too, with luck. A book that might be a start is John Hedgedcoe's _Complete Guide to Photographing People_. You might be beyond quite a bit of this already, maybe.

-- Paul Harris (pharris@neosoft.com), September 18, 2000.

Paul offers good advice and I would like to ad that you might try to see anything by Canadian photographer Josef Karsh. (I may have spell the first name wrong) I have one of his books. In my and many others' opinions, he's the greatest portrait photographer and you will find men as well as women posed. If you study Karsh's work and learn from it, it will help you to be a much better photographer. By the way, does anybody know if he's still alive?

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), September 19, 2000.

Sorry, that's Yousuf Karsh. I don't know where I got Josef....

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), September 19, 2000.

Karsh's work is a fine example! A master of style and grace. Now, alot has to do with the head tilt as far as portraiture... not to mention lighting and all that. A few things to keep in mind is the way the head is tilted. Let's say you have a subject facing the camera in a non discript pose. If the head is tilted towards the camera (forward) it is generally know as a feminine head tilt. If the subject tilts the head towards the back shoulder (or away from the camera), this is a masculine head tilt. More times than not, a woman can go either way but if a man has a feminine head tilt it looks "odd" and even the passerby on the street will notice something "a miss". That being said, if you like a particular pose, whether it be the hand on the chin or a full length and in your eyes it looks good, whose to say that it is wrong? Yes there are rules, so to speak, but they are also made to be broken. Usually, a good photo store will have a selction of some good posing books... another idea.

-- Scott Walton (scotlynn@shore.net), September 19, 2000.

I once worked a season in a studio that did high school senior photos. By far the best pose I came up with was to place guys in a pose I actually saw in a book of male nudes. Of course, these guys were clothed, but the pose didn't care. The most expensive print sold for the year was one of my clothed "nude" settings.

-- E.L. (elperdido65@hotmail.com), September 19, 2000.

Try your library or used book stores (powells.com or abebooks.com)for Light on People by Paul Petzold. He addresses lighting and that implies posing whatever gender your subject.

-- Jeff Polaski (polaski@acm.org), September 20, 2000.

I've been thinking about your question on and off for the last couple of days and have another couple of thoughts. In really getting into the subject of any kind of portraiture, male or female, you will probably find more advice in books than you will ever find on the web. Why? Because photographic portraiture has been one of the main uses of the medium since Dauguerre, and one of the main use of other media since well before Rembrandt and Michelangelo. Because of this, the sheer weight of printed material and lots of pictures, etc., in galleries makes a thorough on-line study of the subject redundant. On the other hand, there is nothing like the Web for getting a few pictures up for world-wide distribution instantly. So, the media have different strengths, and we can enjoy them for what they are. As you look for examples of good poses, you will find them in paintings, too. Many of the effective ideas have not changed all that much.

In the area of lighting, and many aspects of the setup of the picture, the photographer has immense control. There are many books with myriad examples, and I think this sort of thing suits print well.

I wonder if by now there is a computer tutorial on CD-Rom or whatever that would enable you to experiment with lighting a virtual scene? That could be very interesting indeed!

I would like to take a course in portraiture with critiques from professionals and talented fellow students that would be offered at a time when I could afford to take it....

Enjoy.

-- Paul Harris (pharris@neosoft.com), September 21, 2000.

I have small collection of books going back to the 30's on posing and portrature. Posing styles evolve over the years and while some of the ideas of a masculine v feminine tilt of the head and how you should formally place the hands are time tested they tend to produce what mose people would say are very conservative results. I always look carefully and study the poses used in various current magazines and if I find an interesting one I tear it out and add it to my scrapbook.

-- bill zelinski (willy226@yahoo.com), September 27, 2000.

Look at Duane Michaels and Irving Penn. Do not look at Monte Zucker... t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), October 02, 2000.

You might also try going to the Washington Post 'Camera Works' and their weekly column by Frank Ripper. He just had an excellent 2-part on portraiture. Go to http://www.washingtonpost.com then go to Camera Works and scroll down to the Ripper column. Also, you will find far more useful information about photography in print then you will ever find on the internet. Try spending some time at Barnes & Noble or Borders and I am sure you will find what you are looking for.

-- Steve LeHuray (icommag@toad.net), October 05, 2000.

Ask a proffessional who is experienced in male portraiture to help you by putting you in a male pose so you can FEEL it instead of just seeing it. Then do your own experiments on anyone who will sit for you....there is nothing like practice to improve our skills. Fire off a few rolls with documentation of each shot so you can refer back to it.

The suggestion about looking at artwork was great......it all boils down to the same thing.....the human figure! and how we choose to present it.

Good Luck Jane!!

Vanessa

-- Vanessa Lentz (dv.lentz@ns.sympatico.ca), October 06, 2000.