Learning posing from others photos

[AdamZx3]

I am having a hard time thinking up poses from scratch and have been looking at other professional photographers work and work from the net like flickr...etc. Is it considered frowned upon to loosely borrow a pose from ones picture?

 

[Big Mike]

I wouldn't frown upon it. In fact, I had a photography instructor who told us to go through magazines and look for poses that we liked...then use those to help us set up our shots. He said to tear out the pages and he called them tear sheets. You could obviously do the same with shots you see on the internet.

There would obviously be a line in the sand somewhere...if you copied a shot exactly, it would be more frowned upon...but for poses...I doubt that there is anything that hasn't been done.

How do we even know if the shot you are looking at, wasn't copied from somewhere else?

 

[skieur]

I am having a hard time thinking up poses from scratch and have been looking at other professional photographers work and work from the net like flickr...etc. Is it considered frowned upon to loosely borrow a pose from ones picture?

I would tend to say no, however, I would certainly not borrow some of the extremely poor, unnatural poses, that I have seen in many photo forums and would also hesitate to use poses that have become so common that they are almost clichés either.

The nature of the pose and the shot should flow from the reason for taking the shot in the first place...emphasizing clothes, figure, look, style, or personality for example.

All the elements in the shot including the pose should "fit" together. The opposite of that I remember was a shot of a woman in spike heels but casual summer shirt and shorts in an abandoned factory in the most awkward half crouched pose that you could possibly imagine. It looked downright silly.

skieur

 

[drflet]

Skieur hits on a good point - there's a lot of different things that make up a photo. I would look as the pose as just one element. As long as you're not copying several - lighting, cropping, coloring, etc... - I think its alright.

 

[AdamZx3]

Thanks guys! , thats kinda what I was figuring, as long as you don't rip off the whole look and call it your own.

 

[droyz2000]

I would agree that looking at other photos for poses is not a big deal. I am sure that almost every pose conceivable has already been done. In that sense you are using someone else's pose even if you have not seen it before.