Doug Box's Guide to Posing for Portrait Photographers

This book provides an easy to understand, practical foundation for posing. I agree with 95% of the author's opionions. However, some of his examples for posing men in this text are not much different than for women, and that's where I have some differences. But hey, there's no monopoloy on what's "correct" so that's OK. Generally speaking, I like men to have their forward shoulder lower than the rear shoulder which requires most to place weight on the front foot for 2/3 view and full face shots. In the author's opening example of the Posing Men chapter, he says, "Though this handsome subject had his weight on the wrong foot..." when I actually think this is the correct way to pose men.His advice on posing hands is very good, and the depth with which he discusses hands is not found in many of the manuals out there.I recommend this book to anyone who wants a good quick reference for posing people.

Hard to believe I never thought to get Doug's books before, especially considering that I've owned and read Barbara's (Box) books and was completely smitten with her style and storytelling abilities. Well, perhaps I should have started with Doug first. Anyone with sincere and dedicated interest in posing advice and philosophy should do themselves the service of reading this! I only wish i would have read it sooner. I've shot portraiture for nearly 15 years, with great results, over 100 weddings and model shoots, corporate and event work, you name it and I feel as though I've cheated myself and my clients, by not having read this LONG time ago. Always good to refresh and take someone else's point of view, because if you think you know it all, then you know nothing at all. No better person to learn from than Mr. Box. I hope to be fortunate enough to attend one of his workshops soon. His style and insight are wonderful and enlightening.

Although the quality of the content is excellent, the Kindle formayying of the book is awful. Paragraphs put of place, imagas on the wrong pages, disjointed reading experience. Very disappointing. I have had other "technical" manuals that had no such problems, but some are just awful. Maybe a common publisher? I'm not sure who is responsible for it but it needs to be fixed.

I found the first quarter of the book to contain some good information, e.g. about C and S pose and the importance of positioning the talent's feet, classic views (full face, two-thirds, profile), and classic portrait lengths. The author shows how to obtain "classic" posed portraits - which to me look like as if the talent is forced into an uncomfortable and unnatural position. What I didn't like so much is that the book often isn't very clear (e.g. I had to search the web for a better explanation before I understood the C and S pose). The images aren't very didactic either - to keep with the poses: The picture explaining the position of the feet clearly shows a shadow falling to the left, but the light actually comes from the left also - confusing at best. The text then goes on to explain the position of the shoulders and head - but the image only shows the legs. Not good teaching. The remaining three thirds of the book are written very general, e.g. "my portrait require good lighting", and feel a bit like the author had to fill the pages to make it a book. I am also not a big fan of the author's self advertising - I've already paid him for the book, so why am I now harassed to go and check out his lighting products? Overall, the book contains some valuable information about posing and how to achieve a classic portrait studio look, however, I think there is quite a bit room to improve and expand on topics.

My daughter bought this for me as a Christmas gift and I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad she did! I've read and re-read this book tons of times and each time I do, I learn something new. It's probably not a book seasoned professionals will find much use for, but for newbies to the field like me, it's perfect. I've heard some of the photographers I admire most say posing and lighting are two of the hardest things to master and this book helps with both.

Posing and portraits are two things I have avoided studying but I believe in learning as much as possible to round out my understanding. I now have a much better grasp on why 'posing' is done and how to avoid that 'fake' look. This is well worth reading and is simple to understand.

There are some useful tid-bits in this book, and for those I'm glad I read it.However, on the whole I found much of the information either obvious or dated. A lot of the book is discussion of what works and doesn't work in some sample photos; I found many of these photos to be rather cheesy and often liked the "natural pose" that was then corrected.As other reviewers have noted, I also found it tiresome how every chapter seemed to start with "Many photographers ...." followed by some thing they do wrong.

Word of warning for Kindle and Ipad readers. The book in that format is very hard to grasp. The photo that he refers to are two or three pages back, He will reference a left and right photo that will be on top of each other.I broke down and bought a hard copy because I do think the advice he was giving was worth seeing and understanding.

I was very enthusiastic to finally find a book devoted to poses. It seems that while posing for paintings is extremely well covered, the same does not go for photography. Decent writer / photographers have yet to pen the definitive account of this key aspect of portraiture.So to Doug Box, a middle-aged, middle-of-the-road cuddly beardie of a bloke. He makes technically good, safe portrait photography for middle America using a dozen or so tried and tested archetypes. Be careful though, before you know it he'll have your family dressed in identical outfits like some kind of multi-generational cloning project.Doug's book comes in many chapters and is illustrated with more of his pictures than one would wish to see (they have aged badly). Yet the number of useful hints for achieving good poses is limited - you could reduce them to a handful of blog entries. He would have been better off giving some detailed lighting diagrams, focusing on a few really good portraits and describing the shoots in more detail. And also looking at some other photographers' work. For starters.Some will say that there is a market for the kind of images that Box stages and I would agree. But it's yesterday's market. People don't see poses like these when they open magazines any more and, young people especially, will rarely want to be shown like this. Unless its on grandmama's mantelpiece.If you're looking for a natural, modern or edgy look then using this book will be a waste of your time.

Ok but didn't teach much more than I already knew

Mag meine pers. Meinung sein, aber mich sprechen die Bilder nicht an. Kein Vergleich zu anderen Portrait Büchern.Auch die Beschreibungen sind kurz, wenig anschaulich, eignen sich nicht zum problemlosen nachstellen. Lieber was aus der Galileo Reihe oder von Scott Kelby nehmen...