How many times have you gotten to a Senior Portrait Session and your client is a bit shy or quite the opposite, energetic and full of life, but just feels awkward?

Never fear, Britney is here! I am here to help you put your mind at ease.

Here are 12 stunning senior portrait ideas I’ve consistently used in my sessions, guaranteed to provide your clients with a diverse range of looks.

1. WALKING

I know, you’re probably thinking, “Seriously Britney? Walking?” Bare with me for one second, because this is going to get good and help you so much! When I get to my sessions, I always have my clients walk TOWARDS me and then AWAY from me. This helps them to relax, loosen up and feel comfortable with me.

There are so many different dynamic ways of walking. Here is a tip for you:: ALWAYS HAVE YOUR CLIENT DO SOMETHING WITH THEIR HANDS. Whether they are holding something; their hair, a hat, some flowers, their dress, anywhere on their body, their hands need to be doing something to create movement and catch the audiences eye.

If you are in a tight location and don’t have a lot of walking room, have your client rock back and forth from their right foot to their left foot. This gives the motion in the picture that they are walking.

2. Look Left, Look Right ,and Then Straight

As they are walking towards you, have them look left, then look right and then straight at you.

As they look left, have them play with their hair. As they look right, have them hold onto their dress and give it movement back and forth, as they look straight at you, have then put their hand on their hip and give you a fake laugh ( which will instigate a real laugh). These are ideas on what your client can do as they are walking towards you and looking in all directions, don’t feel like every time they look left they have to play with their hair and so on.

You will start to notice what your clients signature pose(s) are. In the images below my client is looking left (its really her right but for image sake, you get the picture) and I had her walk in a fierce confident pose. As she looked right ( again, her left) I had her put her hand on her waist. As she looked straight at me, I had her spin and touch her hair.

3. SPIN

I love SPINNING IMAGES, especially when my clients wear dresses ( which I always encourage them to wear). There is something about spinning and the movement you can feel through an image. As your client spins, have them gaze off into the distance, look up into the sky ( that is if the sun isn’t crazy bright), and have them constantly look at you as they spin. There are so many beautiful ways to capture a spinning image. Go try it out!!

4. The Sexy Grasp

Having your clients wrap one arm around their waste and having their hand hold onto their other arm gives a sexy but yet flirty grasp that shows a confident and fierce woman. Remember to capture it in 3 different angles; straight on, a slight side angle where you can still see the physical touch of the hands, and having the client lift their shoulder a bit towards their chin which gives a flirty look.

5. Dominant Pose

This pose speaks volume.

Have the clients feet about hip width apart, and have them lean towards their dominant side. This is when you add their arms. Remember they always need to do something with their hands.

Their hands can be folded across under their chest. If your client has bigger boobs, have them put their hands on their hips, bring their hands in towards their belly button, and twist the opposite shoulder of the dominant hip.

Another great pose is placing your hands barely in your pockets instead of your hips ( if your client was wearing pants ). This is also a great pose to have them look Left, Look Right and then look straight at the camera. As they do that, have thier hands play with their hair, touch their neck, touch the bottom of their chin, ANYTHING!!! CREATE MOVEMENT. They can alternate dominant sides back and forth with a variety of hand movements.

6. Holding Something

Think of it as your hands always having a job, or something to do. If our hands just lay by the side of our bodies, it doesn’t show any emotion or a story. But if you put a book, a hat, some flowers, their hair, beautiful gloves, holding their dress, fixing their earing, in their hand(s) it becomes a whole different story. Our eyes are drawn to hands. Hands create movement, which catch our eyes. Remember to create a story and give your clients hands something to do.

7. SIT

This is probably the easiet pose for your client to do. And while they are sitting, you can capture a variety of angles. Again, remember to have their hands take on a job, have their hands do something. You can have them play with their hair, they can frame their face with their arm. ( Because the idea is to always create shape, and one of the important shapes to create is a triangle. )

Even if your client is just leaning against a surface and not fully sitting down, that is perfect too. Having your client brace themselves with their hands, tells a story of openness. Play around with what your client can and cannot do.

8. Look Down

Guiding your clients to look down has a very elegant technique. It not just the motion of looking down, its placing their head in the right direction and having their eyes fall towards their shoulder, down at some flowers or a book, the possibilities are endless.

9. Look Over in the Distance

Portraits are about story telling, about the natural candid shots. If I wanted my clients to look at me and smile into the camera every time, it would be boring.

I want my clients to dream, to lose themselves in the moment, to feel beautiful and relaxed. Again, giving something to do with their hands, have them look slightly left into the distance, slightly right, and or even off center from you as the photographer.

10. Frame Their Head

Remember we want to create shapes with our clients body. Triangles, and ‘S’ shapes. The eye is drawn to others eyes. When we shape our clients head with their arm(s), we pull them in almost to be hypnotized.

11. Running

You guessed it. We started with walking, and we are ending with running.

Realistically you can have your client start with the walking poses and do some running as well. Because rememeber, posing, changing outfits takes a lot of energy for your clients. So you want to capture as many shots with as many outfits possible; 3 outfits max.

There is a beauty in running in a dress. It creates wind and movement in the fabric that, again, tells a story. Where are they running too? Where are they going? They run so elegantly, they aren’t even breaking a sweat (( so the viewer thinks..lol)) What story are you going to create?

Have them run and look over their shoulder. Have them run towards you. Have them run and look Left, Right, and Straight. Have them run and look any direction and laugh. Create movement. TELL THEIR STORY!

12. Blow A Kiss

What a beautiful way to end a photo shoot. Have the client blow you a kiss in a variety of poses. These shots are always fun to use in marketing as a thank you.

BONUS::

This is something I highly encourage all photographers to do, that I even forget to do myself.

Take 3 different angles of one pose. This concept gives a whole new perspective on one pose that creates a variety of images to add to your clients gallery.

Again, this is a task I forget many times. These are as close to what I am trying to explian. If my client was posed like this. I would capture all three of these angles, but then I would move myslef and get lower to the ground to see a bit more of the sky.

I would go in front of her and have her stand where she is, but have her twist so her shoulder so that it is coming towards the camera and have her chin follow towards her chin so that it becomes a flirty image.

There are so many angles and directions we can capture from one pose and make it look like many, expecially from different angles. The key is to keep shooting, be different than other photographers, love what you do, and make your clients want to experience their photo shoot all over again!

If you want to see more of my work you can go to https://sassymamaphotography.com/photography

Thank you for stopping by! I would love to hear your thoughts and see all the beauty you have created!! Hugs to you my friend~

Britney