No, this man was not spontaneously posing as I walked by with my camera. I had to tell him what to do. When you are photographing people looking into the camera—portraits—you should be prepared to direct them. It may feel silly, but it will actually relax them and it looks good in the finished product. I’m hoping these pictures will give you some ideas.

When you’re shooting a photograph of someone looking into the camera, there’s almost always a little bit of direction required from the photographer. I have my own little bag of stock comments that I say to people when I try to get them to look the way I want them to look and exude whatever it is that I think they should be exuding in my photograph. Even though you’re shooting still photographs there’s a little bit of movie-director-thinking required here. Some of my direction is practical and necessary like “fix your collar” and some of my comments are an attempt to lighten the moment and hopefully relaxing everyone, myself included.

The point is this: think for a moment about what you’re going to say to your subjects and how you’re going to behave as the person behind the camera.

I often start with a completely deadpan  “This shouldn’t take more than three or four hours.” This seems to get a reaction.

I tell them that I’m going to stare at them for a while and they should do their best to ignore me which is, of course, silly and impossible. I mean, come on, there’s a six-foot-two-bald guy ten feet away staring at them. But this comment actually has a practical application. I really am dealing with my own internal anxiety driven by a desire to create a great photo. I find that small talk is simply going to keep me from doing what everyone wants me to do—take a great photo.  So for a while, I absorb the situation and decide what I’m going to do. Most people seem to appreciate the artist at work vibration this creates. I’ve considered wearing a cape and a beret for this act but that would be a little much.

 I want to get a little body language of some kind and this is a great place to start.

I tell them what to do with their hands. This is obviously related to body language, but what I’m trying to avoid here is the obvious discomfort of someone who is trying to figure out what to do with their hands. That’s photo death.

I tell them I’m going to push them around like their a sack of potatoes. Granted, there is a certain body type that I wouldn’t recommend using this line with—the one that looks like a sack of potatoes, that is—but I have found that most people appreciate me cutting right to the chase. I’m fussy about how they’re juxtaposed against the background and if I want them to literally move two inches to the right, I have found the best way to get them there is to gently nudge them by the shoulders and coax them over. (If you ask the average human to move two inches to the right, you generally get something in the 18 to 24 inches range. This does not work with photographers fussy about backgrounds.)

I’m not a joke teller but I do try to make quirky, unexpected, entertaining comments hoping to make people at least smile. I tell them this is going to feel stupid, but it’s going to look great.

And as risky as this sounds, I tell most of my subjects this is going to be one of the best photographs anyone will ever take of them. I believe it and it seems to relax them. I assume that most people will only be photographed a handful of times by someone giving it their all as much as I am and I want them to know it.

There’s a short, intense relationship that exists between a photographer and a photo subject. You want them to be as into it as you are.

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