Photo shoot of slim girl

[xzyragon]

Not to put more fuel on this thread, but what you consider "hot" actually is extremely determined by your culture, regardless of the race of the person you're judging. It's also an extremely individual definition that varies person to person.

For the OP, if the photos are for her (i.e. she's a paying client), then it doesn't matter what you deem attractive or unattractive. Your goal is to make her feel her pictures are good / hot / attractive / whatever. This involves getting to know the client and figuring out what she wants to see / what insecurities (if any) she wants to hide, and what not. You then use your skills as a photographer to best portray her as she wants to be portrayed. This COULD involve using the tips given above, but you'll never know unless you talk to / show your client.

If the photos are free / for you, then you do whatever you want.

 

[PhotographTalk]

The question is now what is thin as it depends on the person looking at her. To me this is thin and there is just nothing at all you could do to make her look hot other than feeding her Big Macs for a year or two

Is this one thin, nope I think she is hot

 

[pgriz]

If you have to talk your way out of explaining what "hot" means, then your trying way to hard.

It takes literally .02 seconds to tell if someone is HOT (attractive), has nothing to do with culture.

I am a white american, however I think Asians are HOT as ****.

So are latinos, so can be indians. lol

HOT is a pretty universal language

Sorry, I disagree. Attractiveness, sexiness, "hot-ness" is very much culturally determined. The fact that we in North America are saturated by "our" cultural references doesn't mean that other people's views are identical to ours. Furthermore, I may not buy into what the culture tells me is "attractive". Presumably each of us can make up our own minds on whether we endorse the "cultural" viewpoint, or not. On the other hand, the North American exporting of culture to the rest of the world has been very successful, so it can be said that North American culture is at least known globally.

Edit... looks like faster typers than I already made that point...

 

[sscarmack]

If you have to talk your way out of explaining what "hot" means, then your trying way to hard.

It takes literally .02 seconds to tell if someone is HOT (attractive), has nothing to do with culture.

I am a white american, however I think Asians are HOT as ****.

So are latinos, so can be indians. lol

HOT is a pretty universal language

Sorry, I disagree..............

Read number post 15 and answer it.

 

[JacaRanda]

Somebody runs the media. If there is blame, it goes deeper than simply 'the media'.

Being an American also, and on this planet for 51 years, I have rarely found much of anything that "we would all agree" upon. Sometimes fortunately and some times unfortunately.

Since the OP's first language is not English, and perhaps neither is the model, what is hot could be quite different than the generalization of what Americans think is hot.

 

[pgriz]

If you have to talk your way out of explaining what "hot" means, then your trying way to hard.

It takes literally .02 seconds to tell if someone is HOT (attractive), has nothing to do with culture.

I am a white american, however I think Asians are HOT as ****.

So are latinos, so can be indians. lol

HOT is a pretty universal language

Sorry, I disagree..............

Read number post 15 and answer it.

Yes, by our shared cultural reference the first one is seen as "hot" and the second one is "not". But neither would be particularly interesting to me as an individual, for different reasons.

 

[JacaRanda]

The question is now what is thin as it depends on the person looking at her. To me this is thin and there is just nothing at all you could do to make her look hot other than feeding her Big Macs for a year or two

Is this one thin, nope I think she is hot

And in my opinion or taste, #1 not attractive at all and #2 pretty, but not attractive (to me).

 

[JacaRanda]

Crapola, I am too slow a typer also.

 

[rui silva]

There are some really good points here, I never thought that my post would generate such a deep discussion!

Anyway, @paigew I do not know you and I do not make a habit of judging people, but (incurring in the risk of making you even more upset) I am sorry to tell you that you are overreacting to all of this, and that you are just writing stuff that looks like it comes right out of a "feminist premade phrasebook" like "Women are beautiful no matter what body type".

Of course they are, but not only women, also men, and children, and dogs and birds. But that's not the point, the point is not I , but the client asked me to make her look "good/hotter/sexy/whatever the original word is translated into english". So I'm sorry to tell you that I am not a "stupid male that objectifies women and only thinks about big boobs and blond girls and doesn't look at the beauty that everyone possesses", I'm just a guy looking for advices on how to make a friends request come true.

Actually someone wrote something really important that I haven't even thought, and that is to ask her what parts of her body she wants to to highlight and what parts she likes least. So yeah, good advice, thanks.

 

[paigew]

I am sorry that you feel I am overreacting. But yeah, when you ask, how do I make a slim girl hotter. That is objectifying; and if this is a client (as you say in your most recent post), you should consider this a wake up call in your professional photography career. Unless you want to be known as a sleazy guy photographer, you might want to think of how you talk about women + their bodies.

Yes thinner women need to be posed in different ways than curvier women. This is not done to make them "more hot". This is done to flatter the body type and to bring out positive qualities + hide ones they may not love as much. The same thing goes for men. I do not pose smaller/larger men in order to make them "more hot". If the client wants you to, in general, make them look good, then yeah, as I said in my original response, basic posing knowledge will help.

 

[photoguy99]

What exactly is the difference on meaning between:

Flatter the body type

And

Make look hotter

The latter seems to me simply a different way to say the former. A way that might be used by, say, people of lower socioeconomic status. Do you have something against poor people?

 

[Derrel]

Photographing a person objectifies them. Once a person is photographed, their image, and therefore "them", their personage, becomes the object to which our attention is focused. I think people photography is in almost every way imaginable, ALL ABOUT "objectifying people". One can put a negative or a positve spin on anything, but photographing a person makes them an "object", an object shown in a photograph. They are no longer a flesh and blood person, but merely a 2-dimensional object, shown as was recorded by the lens. Trying to portray a person in a flattering way is objectifying the person; photographing the person in a way that makes them look ugly is also objectifying them. Fine art photographers have deliberately, and willingly, and with planning, objectified people since photography was invented. Every advertising photo is designed to objectify the people in it; they are not REAL, actual,living, breathing people--just symbols, representations, echos...objects that were at one time, before the lens.

 

[photoguy99]

It turns out that people are actually objects. Objectification itself is not the problem. It's all about context.

If I objectify my coworker when I am supposed to be working with her, problem. When I objectify my wife and make a beautiful nude photograph of her, excellent. But only because she and I are on the same page about the process.

If the client specifically asks to be objectified in this sense, if the client says, in effect, 'I am a person, but I have a physical form and at this moment I want a photograph of that physical vessel that is as sexy as possible' then we are none of us in a position to judge. A woman owns her body, does she not? She is the sole possessor of the object that houses her selfness.

 

[JohnnyWrench]

Yes thinner women need to be posed in different ways than curvier women. This is not done to make them "more hot". This is done to flatter the body type and to bring out positive qualities + hide ones they may not love as much. The same thing goes for men. I do not pose smaller/larger men in order to make them "more hot". If the client wants you to, in general, make them look good, then yeah, as I said in my original response, basic posing knowledge will help.

Semantics.

Flatter the body type / Make them look good / Make them more hot

Maybe you object to the word hot for some reason but it's all basically the same thing. Especially when there's somewhat of a language barrier. I think you're getting upset over nothing here.

 

[sscarmack]