Next to lighting, posing is the most challenging aspect of photography—with so many body parts to capture, the possibilities are endless, and it’s all too easy to make a wrong turn. This illustrated reference provides both amateur shutterbugs and seasoned pros with the perfect place to turn when in need of quick posing strategies and fresh ideas. Containing 500 contemporary images by leading photographers, this indispensable manual explains posing fundamentals as well as how to create a flattering, feature-specific photograph—one that focuses on the head, shoulders, arms, torso, or feet—in different levels of close-ups, from head-shots to full-lengths.
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198 reviews for 500 Poses for Photographing Women: A Visual Sourcebook for Portrait Photographers
3.8out of 5
★★★★★
★★★★★
6
★★★★★
2
★★★★★
2
★★★★★
0
★★★★★
1
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★★★★★
FaRi –
Es un libro bueno, dispones de muchas poses con poco texto, sirve para hacerse una idea de distintas maneras de colocar a las personas.
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★★★★★
Bakari –
Ditto, ditto, ditto everything the first reviewer wrote. I just received my copy of 500 Poses and I’m highly disappointed. I should have known better, though, because it’s follows the same format of most Amherst Media books. It’s the typical 128 pages with photos from some of the top photographers in the country. Nothing wrong with quality work, but this author failed to put the poses in context. Why and when do certain poses work? How do you work with models and non-models to get good poses? What about large women who don’t have the ideal bodies of the models in this book? I happen to get large women as clients and it would be great to have some pointers for photographing them.
Jeff Smith’s Posing Techniques for Location Portrait Photography is better than this book on the subject. It’s also an Amherst book with about the same amount of pages. But he at least tried to explain the choices in makes in posing women.
I guess the best way to use this book is to study the photographs and notice the similarities in poses and they might be useful guides for helping women pose. I notice for example that many women in the photographs place their hands and arms in pretty similar ways that help accentuate their body or pose.
500 Poses is a great idea but the author and publisher chose the easy way out by just throwing a bunch of photos together in a book and slapping a title on it. Needless to say…don’t waist your money on this one.
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★★★★★
Faith –
I started with 500 poses for groups and couples and have since added every 500 poses title from Perkins including a pre-order of 500 Poses for Infants and Toddlers. These are exactly what the title says…a visual source book. And, as I’ve said in reviews of other books in this “series” I guess you could call it, while I don’t imagine I’ll duplicate any pose exactly, I can see myself easily combining some of the different poses present for more pleasing compositions. I am a very visual learner so this is the perfect medium for me to learn posing as it’s just image after image after image after image of women posed/posing in various scenarios. The same goes for all the other options in the 500 poses family. I forgot to mention in my reviews that there are casual, formal, and business poses all included. I’ve read (looked actually because not much reading is involved in these books) this book a good three or 4 times already since receiving it.
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★★★★★
Sam –
Das Buch kam schnell und enthält die erwarteten Anregungen. Technisch gesehen sind die Bilder allesamt als Vorbild geeignet, motivisch ebenfalls, wenngleich mir manchmal die Abwechslung fehlt. Auf jeden Fall macht es Spaß, durchzublättern und somit gebe ich meine Empfehlung.
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★★★★★
Andrew Mills –
I wasn’t sure at first whether to give this a 4 or 5 rating – I think it’s more a 4.5 if I had the choice.
Now, this book is just a reference – a resource to give you inspiration when you are taking portraits of female models. As well as inspiration for you, you can also show it to models or everyday people (especially those not used to posing), how you expect them to sit, place hands, and so on.
There is an introduction at the start by the book’s author, a basic posing guide at the back along with short biographies for the various authors (the photos are by around 15 separate photographers and not by the book’s author).
The bulk of the book is made up of pages with the 500 photos on – they are printed clearly and large enough to see what’s what, with only image/plate number and author name as text, and have between 2 and 7 images per page.
This is not a “how to” book. It is for inspiration; to give the photographer new ideas for poses, etc., and as I said earlier, handy for showing your subject if they are a new model, or just the average person just in for a portrait session.
That said, it is useful for professionals and beginners alike – but if you are a beginner, you will need to find other resources for lighting techniques, and if you need more information behind the techniques used in the poses.
The only real thing that some may not like is that the overall style feels very American and “traditional”. Not a bad thing in itself, and hardly unexpected as it is an American book, but it would have been nice if there were some other, perhaps more contemporary, styles included.
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★★★★★
Fustin –
Il s’agit d’un livre de photos sans aucune explication, un peu déçu de l’ouvrage. A lire comme un livre d’images
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★★★★★
Amanda Richards –
Essentially a collection of 500 portraits, this book contains a lot of photographs of women, divided into the following sections of poses:
Head and shoulders Waist up ¾ length reclining ¾ length seated ¾ length standing Full length reclining Full length seated Full length standing
Each photograph gives credit to the photographer, but no other information. There’s also a short section on posing basics and a long section about the contributing photographers.
I didn’t find it as useful as it could have been, as many of the poses were duplicated except for the model and the background, and I would have preferred if it were divided into casual, traditional, glamour, fashion and environmental sections. That way, if I’m shooting outdoors in a casual setting, I can go straight to that section and see all the illustrated poses for that type of photo shoot.
It would also have been helpful if some footnotes were used for each portrait, emphasizing a few significant elements of its composition and lighting. (eg – 3/4 view, natural lighting with fill flash, note the tilt of the head and curve of the wrist)
Some of the “poses” were nothing special, the beauty of the photograph being due to other elements such as the background architecture and props, and some photographs looked like amateur point and shoot quality.
The posing basics section was informative, and some of the portraits are inspiring, but as a “visual sourcebook” it’s rather limited.
Amanda Richards, January 17, 2012
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★★★★★
professional photographer ! –
Its simple, if you like the cover image and would like 500 poses in one book as a reference then buy it. If you want to know how to set up lights and flash and what to say to models etc, then look elsewhere.
This is what it says on the tin, its a book with 500 poses !
Fantastic reference book for the professional…
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★★★★★
Michel F –
The low rated reviews of this book are so deceiving. This is a reference book for the very visually inclined viewers. Notice I used the word “viewers”, not “readers”. There is nothing to read. It’s a selection of beautifully lit and posed models in complementary settings taken by internationally known pro photographers. I learned more about posing in this book and the high school senior book by the same author than any other posing book that I have read which for the most part had a lot of confusing text and unflattering pictures. This book doesn’t tell you what to do, it shows you. The pictures are also very well organized starting with head and shoulder shots in a multitude of settings to 3/4 views and full body portraits. Sure one could always browse the internet for ideas and put them together to make their own book but it would be a lot of work to organize them like this and print them out as reference and you probably could never achieve a visual guide of this quality. The bottom line is: This is a visual posing guide of reference quality. If you want written instructions, look somewhere else. If you liked this book, I highly recommend the 500 poses for high school seniors book by the same author.
Helpful(0)Unhelpful(0)You have already voted this
★★★★★
Mo Faruqe –
This book served its intended purpose – nothing more and nothing less. It depicted 500 (actually 501) beautiful pictures of 500 beautiful women in different poses and settings taken by some skilled photographers, with the name of the photographer at the bottom of each photo. At the end of the book there is a two-page write-up on pose basics and another two-page on the photographers along with their website URLs, as a bonus. This book works as a reference for me. Whenever I feel short of ideas, I just flip through the pages and pick some new poses, and sometimes slightly modify them to suit my subject.
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★★★★★
Darekta –
this is a ok book, but if you are looking for something to teach you the lighting and set up. this is not the right book for you. it only has pictures that you can re create that is it. i think it should be a little cheaper than the current cost. they have nice photos in here, but thats all.
FaRi –
Es un libro bueno, dispones de muchas poses con poco texto, sirve para hacerse una idea de distintas maneras de colocar a las personas.
Bakari –
Ditto, ditto, ditto everything the first reviewer wrote. I just received my copy of 500 Poses and I’m highly disappointed. I should have known better, though, because it’s follows the same format of most Amherst Media books. It’s the typical 128 pages with photos from some of the top photographers in the country. Nothing wrong with quality work, but this author failed to put the poses in context. Why and when do certain poses work? How do you work with models and non-models to get good poses? What about large women who don’t have the ideal bodies of the models in this book? I happen to get large women as clients and it would be great to have some pointers for photographing them.
Jeff Smith’s Posing Techniques for Location Portrait Photography is better than this book on the subject. It’s also an Amherst book with about the same amount of pages. But he at least tried to explain the choices in makes in posing women.
I guess the best way to use this book is to study the photographs and notice the similarities in poses and they might be useful guides for helping women pose. I notice for example that many women in the photographs place their hands and arms in pretty similar ways that help accentuate their body or pose.
500 Poses is a great idea but the author and publisher chose the easy way out by just throwing a bunch of photos together in a book and slapping a title on it. Needless to say…don’t waist your money on this one.
Faith –
I started with 500 poses for groups and couples and have since added every 500 poses title from Perkins including a pre-order of 500 Poses for Infants and Toddlers. These are exactly what the title says…a visual source book. And, as I’ve said in reviews of other books in this “series” I guess you could call it, while I don’t imagine I’ll duplicate any pose exactly, I can see myself easily combining some of the different poses present for more pleasing compositions. I am a very visual learner so this is the perfect medium for me to learn posing as it’s just image after image after image after image of women posed/posing in various scenarios. The same goes for all the other options in the 500 poses family. I forgot to mention in my reviews that there are casual, formal, and business poses all included. I’ve read (looked actually because not much reading is involved in these books) this book a good three or 4 times already since receiving it.
Sam –
Das Buch kam schnell und enthält die erwarteten Anregungen. Technisch gesehen sind die Bilder allesamt als Vorbild geeignet, motivisch ebenfalls, wenngleich mir manchmal die Abwechslung fehlt. Auf jeden Fall macht es Spaß, durchzublättern und somit gebe ich meine Empfehlung.
Andrew Mills –
I wasn’t sure at first whether to give this a 4 or 5 rating – I think it’s more a 4.5 if I had the choice.
Now, this book is just a reference – a resource to give you inspiration when you are taking portraits of female models. As well as inspiration for you, you can also show it to models or everyday people (especially those not used to posing), how you expect them to sit, place hands, and so on.
There is an introduction at the start by the book’s author, a basic posing guide at the back along with short biographies for the various authors (the photos are by around 15 separate photographers and not by the book’s author).
The bulk of the book is made up of pages with the 500 photos on – they are printed clearly and large enough to see what’s what, with only image/plate number and author name as text, and have between 2 and 7 images per page.
This is not a “how to” book. It is for inspiration; to give the photographer new ideas for poses, etc., and as I said earlier, handy for showing your subject if they are a new model, or just the average person just in for a portrait session.
That said, it is useful for professionals and beginners alike – but if you are a beginner, you will need to find other resources for lighting techniques, and if you need more information behind the techniques used in the poses.
The only real thing that some may not like is that the overall style feels very American and “traditional”. Not a bad thing in itself, and hardly unexpected as it is an American book, but it would have been nice if there were some other, perhaps more contemporary, styles included.
Fustin –
Il s’agit d’un livre de photos sans aucune explication, un peu déçu de l’ouvrage.
A lire comme un livre d’images
Amanda Richards –
Essentially a collection of 500 portraits, this book contains a lot of photographs of women, divided into the following sections of poses:
Head and shoulders
Waist up
¾ length reclining
¾ length seated
¾ length standing
Full length reclining
Full length seated
Full length standing
Each photograph gives credit to the photographer, but no other information.
There’s also a short section on posing basics and a long section about the contributing photographers.
I didn’t find it as useful as it could have been, as many of the poses were duplicated except for the model and the background, and I would have preferred if it were divided into casual, traditional, glamour, fashion and environmental sections. That way, if I’m shooting outdoors in a casual setting, I can go straight to that section and see all the illustrated poses for that type of photo shoot.
It would also have been helpful if some footnotes were used for each portrait, emphasizing a few significant elements of its composition and lighting. (eg – 3/4 view, natural lighting with fill flash, note the tilt of the head and curve of the wrist)
Some of the “poses” were nothing special, the beauty of the photograph being due to other elements such as the background architecture and props, and some photographs looked like amateur point and shoot quality.
The posing basics section was informative, and some of the portraits are inspiring, but as a “visual sourcebook” it’s rather limited.
Amanda Richards, January 17, 2012
professional photographer ! –
Its simple, if you like the cover image and would like 500 poses in one book as a reference then buy it.
If you want to know how to set up lights and flash and what to say to models etc, then look elsewhere.
This is what it says on the tin, its a book with 500 poses !
Fantastic reference book for the professional…
Michel F –
The low rated reviews of this book are so deceiving. This is a reference book for the very visually inclined viewers. Notice I used the word “viewers”, not “readers”. There is nothing to read. It’s a selection of beautifully lit and posed models in complementary settings taken by internationally known pro photographers. I learned more about posing in this book and the high school senior book by the same author than any other posing book that I have read which for the most part had a lot of confusing text and unflattering pictures. This book doesn’t tell you what to do, it shows you. The pictures are also very well organized starting with head and shoulder shots in a multitude of settings to 3/4 views and full body portraits. Sure one could always browse the internet for ideas and put them together to make their own book but it would be a lot of work to organize them like this and print them out as reference and you probably could never achieve a visual guide of this quality. The bottom line is: This is a visual posing guide of reference quality. If you want written instructions, look somewhere else. If you liked this book, I highly recommend the 500 poses for high school seniors book by the same author.
Mo Faruqe –
This book served its intended purpose – nothing more and nothing less. It depicted 500 (actually 501) beautiful pictures of 500 beautiful women in different poses and settings taken by some skilled photographers, with the name of the photographer at the bottom of each photo. At the end of the book there is a two-page write-up on pose basics and another two-page on the photographers along with their website URLs, as a bonus. This book works as a reference for me. Whenever I feel short of ideas, I just flip through the pages and pick some new poses, and sometimes slightly modify them to suit my subject.
Darekta –
this is a ok book, but if you are looking for something to teach you the lighting and set up. this is not the right book for you. it only has pictures that you can re create that is it. i think it should be a little cheaper than the current cost. they have nice photos in here, but thats all.