The Enthusiast's Guide to Portraiture

42. STANDING VS. SITTING

BOTH STANDING AND seated poses are great, but depending on the type of portrait you want to shoot, one might be more suitable over the other. For example, corporate headshots are often shot with the subject sitting, while senior portraits involve a mixture of standing and sitting, and environmental portrait postures are often narrative dependent. It’s good to keep a few considerations for posing both standing and sitting subjects filed away when on any shoot.

For standing and sitting subjects alike, it’s visually attractive to pose the subject so that their shoulders are more or less uneven (Figure 42.1). Aside from straight-on ...