WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY POSING: ARMS AND HANDS - TOP TIPS FROM PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

Hi and welcome to Toronto Wedding Photographer Blog. Today I'm gonna be showing you guys some of the best posing tips that I use with my clients to pose their hands and their arms a lot of times when I am working with a person for the first time they usually tell me I have no idea what to do with my hands in photographs and that is something that's huge if a hand does not have a purpose or if it does not look natural in an image it tends to look very out of place and your eyes will immediately go to the hands to see what that person is doing typically the hands are doing something important and that's why our eyes are so drawn to hands so if they're doing something strange it's going to stand out quite a lot so one of the things that I always tell my clients is to when they're holding hands never ever ever do this this is what I call shrimp cocktail fingers it's a fun term used in the industry and it helps a lot of my grooms actually remember not to interlace their fingers and the reason that I don't want my couples to ever do this when they're holding hands is because it starts to look like too many fingers the brain wants to count it it's just like a bunch of little finger sausages so I never suggest that when you're holding hands instead what I recommend is a very loose handhold typically I would put the bride's hand in front or whoever has these smaller hand if it is a bride and a bride couple so that's how I'll do that because I don't want the bigger hand overtaking now if you are a bride groom couple and the groom has smaller hands in the bride I'd probably still go with the bride anyway show off her ring on the front but that a really great tip for when you guys are holding hands now in terms of other things that happen with your hands a lot of times I will see really disconnected photographs that people take of a couple during their wedding or engagement session where the couple is standing and they are basically embracing each other with their bodies but there might even be kissing and usually the groom's hand is just dangling down by his side and that is what I call a dead arm and that is because that arm is hanging there why is it there like usually if you're gonna kiss somebody you're gonna wrap both your hands around them so I never want a hand to just be hanging out or an arm to just be hanging out in the universe having no purpose like that it's not the same as it being relaxed if they were walking side by side then that hand could be down with their arm down and nice and relaxed kind of swaying as they're walking that makes sense but to see something that's supposed to be very romantically connected but the arm is dangling by the side it does not connect so remember if your photographer tells you to snuggle up like holding each other or like go ahead and kiss use both of your hands around it or one thing I do like to do for a groom is usually put one of his hands in the pants pocket other hand around the bride that works whether I'm posing them for a more camera aware portrait or if I'm having them kissed but just having an arm hanging by the sight is never good now that's kind of the main things that I see when I'm working with hands and arms one of the things that I find to be very important especially for my brides is the way that their fingers are situated so a lot of times I will see ring selfies where people are doing this they're spreading their fingers really wide and that does not look natural do you ever walk around like this like it looks like you just got your nails done probably not so instead a very relaxed finger position you could have it here on the face and all the fingers are kind of spaced nicely I'm looking in a mirror behind me just to make sure what I'm doing does look like what I would want for it to be happening on a client so really nice like this other hand could come softly this would look so different if I was doing this okay that's not elegant and soft this is elegant soft natural spacing between the fingers that is not too crazy and weird and strange it's also very loose and elegant typically for women I want them to have softer looking hands for men things like fists convey a lot more strength I usually I'm not using a lot of fists in my work but if I was working with more of a commercial client and he wanted to look really masculine I would have him use more fists but for most clients I want them really loose and natural and then my brides especially very very loose so with hands one of the things that you can do when you're posing and I'm mostly going to talk to brides about this because I feel like brides have more fun hand options you can hold your bouquet which is really great you can hold on to part of your dress so just grab it very loosely I always say ballerina hands so that is just like this your middle finger and your thumb loosely not stiffly don't do weird things with the other fingers but very loosely you are going to grab onto your dress and you can sway it and before I move on to other hand posing positions I do want to make the point that when you are playing with your dress a lot of brides have the tendency to just be very straight or very stiff you want everything to flow naturally now if I had to wider space to fill men I would show you what that looked like vertically so does that I'll post some photos but just to demonstrate here like if I was doing this playing with my dress and it was down by my hip that looks weird but to like bend every joint in a very wavy circular like motion it's a lot more elegant you're going to see things like that in ballet and ballet the lines are very important if you have a joint and it bends break it we don't want to maybe go 90 degrees but just a soft Bend a loose line so that's something I highly recommend for brides is that whenever you are introducing motion to play with your gown or your veil always bend everything in a very beautiful oceanic type movement and that's going to be great now another thing that I love to do with hands and my brides is I actually will have him hold on to a bit of hair because one of the things that I love to do is to take Bridal portraits with and without the bouquet if I have every single photo of the bride with the bouquet she has very few to know photos that show off just her dress in her look alone so if I'm not using a bouquet I have to place the hands somewhere so usually in the hair is where I'll go grab on to loose bit of it bring it behind her jawline I'm not wearing earrings but I would maybe have her play with her earrings a little bit all very soft loose hands so that's a really nice thing that you can do if your photographer does not give a lot of direction then you can just start doing things and say like does this look good I don't know I hope that they will give you direction or at least let you know that what you're doing does look nice so another thing you could have a little bit of a stronger pose you could have one hand bouncing on the other have it like that have it up in your hair could go sideways something like that so just find realistic things to play with whether it's on your address or in your hair or just softly touching your face that's gonna be beautiful now if you want a lovely photo that shows off bracelets or rings you could always have it so I'm just gonna stand on my tippy toes so you guys can see so you could always have this lower here to wear effectively your hand is going to be on your other wrist and so it's gonna be nice and loose it might be down by the side of your hips something like that so those are all really great things to do with your hands during photos but again the key to this is soft and natural and realistic okay you never want anything to look too harsh or jarring like really harsh angles unless you're going for a really high fashion look but chances are you're probably going for a more soft or Bridal look and so that's what you're going to follow our softer cleaner lines now let's jump onto the arms I've already mentioned especially with a couple that your arms should have a purpose if you are kissing have the hands around each other or a hand in the pocket have the hands always doing something as an extension of your arm now the biggest thing that I see almost every woman trying to do whenever I go to take a photo of them is that they immediately think to themselves my arm cannot look fat or big in this photo and thus I cannot have it directly against my side so this must be the only option here to have it like this crazy thing sometimes they even break their wrist like I just want to make sure I'm doing this right yeah so they'll break the risk this to me is very unnatural looking and it's a very harsh very jarring right angle to me and so what I will do is I often suggest that instead my Brides follow a couple of other rules okay so I've lowered my camera just a bit so that you guys can see this part better so instead of doing like this with one or both arms what I would recommend is to at least have one arm more natural by the side and what you can do you don't have to have it squeezed in you want to leave a little bit of a space so right now this lower hand is literally just resting against my thigh okay so that's gonna be something that's going to just look natural it's on my thigh and instead of a harsh right angle I still have a little abend and I have space that shows the space between my waist and my arm especially if you're wearing a long sleeve outfit if you have this it's going to add bulk to your side no matter how small or how large you are so to have a little bit of a break especially if you have a sleeve that is the same color as your outfit right now my skin is extremely white so it's very easy for it to contrast against the black so you can clearly see where my waist is but just doing this in any outfit it's gonna be great especially if you have no contrast between sleeve and your waist so that's enough of a space that's not gonna make your arm look bigger than it really is because of course if you squish like this it's gonna get bigger bring it off to the side a little bit now if you do want to have your hand higher up on your hip having it out like this is way too harsh so draw it back a little bit bring the hand down just a touch and that's gonna rest along a nice curve of your hip down into your leg that is an excellent position for a bride whether you are a bride on the wedding day or you are just honestly just a woman in general it looks really great so instead of the next time you're out with your girlfriends and everybody goes to take a picture and all the girls are like hey with this whole like a right angle that's very harsh and very distracting and unnatural looking you're gonna be the one who looks like this your arm is not gonna look bigger than it really is and you're gonna look a lot more relaxed natural and elegant I did want to show off my nails I just had them done this is the first time I've ever had like fancy nails done they were inspired by a photo of macarons and the girl who did my nails that I've never had anybody bring me something that wasn't a photo of somebody else's nails and I was like I love being unique and if I can't find it already in the form of what I want it in I will find it in the form of food or fashion or interior design so just a little quick shout out to I nail ology for doing a really cool job on my nails so the last thing I do want to talk about is really something that is very dependent on the environment that you are in so if you are already using some of these tips that I've suggested to you or you want to change things up one thing that you guys can do is make use of your environment so if there's a ledge and you can realistically lean your arm on it that could be really nice you can bring the other wrists on top a guy you kind of leaned against it so I love using different structural elements when I'm shooting at locations that I can use to have a variety of my posing that also makes sense for the environment that I'm in so for example if I have a railing I will have a couple lean against it drape their hands over it nicely look out at whatever the view is if I have a wall I will oftentimes prop the groom up against it and their bride almost think she's very gently pushing him up against the wall just a cute romantic moment if there's a column or something or a gate I'll have them hold on to it if it's thin or rest their hand above it like up high and that could be done with just the bride and the groom is hot kind of hugging her from behind or just a photo of the bride herself but anything that you could hold on to a rest on those are gonna be really great things and remember when you are doing this make sure your hand isn't resting and then it's like weird fingers you still want everything to be really nice and relaxed so any harsh right angles at least for me are a big no those tend to read very masculine and like very like you're trying to dominate a scene which is a really great look for some forms of photography but not typically for wedding photography at least not for the clients that I have so they usually want to look a little bit more ethereal soft and dreamy the men usually want to look masculine but not overly dominant and masculine on their wedding day so all of these things are things that you guys can take and apply but really it is all about confidence and making sure that you look and feel relaxed because if you don't feel relaxed you're never gonna look relaxed in your face so that's gonna be it guys the final tip I'm gonna leave you with is always make sure your shoulders are back and down that is a huge thing to do we never want shoulders creeping up in the ears for photos and we never want hunching especially from the side that just really completes all of the bits of the arm I'm gonna make a future video about posing with the legs the hips and the feet because that is really important as well but I think for most of you the hands and arms are probably gonna be your primary areas of concern when posing on your wedding day if you guys did enjoy this video please be sure to leave a like and I will see next time.