Dance Poses in Wedding Photography

If our married couple is willing, we will often have them go into dance type poses for their wedding photography session at one location. This simply involves placing the SF City Hall couple in dancing poses and having them try different (and simple) positions. This is also a good example of Dynamic posing. In the image above we asked the groom to dip the bride slightly on the second floor of San Francisco city hall. We coached the groom on how to handle this in a safe and comfortable manner to make sure that the bride had plenty of support. We never push our married couples into anything they are not comfortable with. We do occasionally work with couples who only want to do simple poses and there is nothing wrong with that. In this particular case, the couple really went for it and dipped far beyond what we asked for. That works too!

Sometimes we end up with a bride and groom who are actually dancers or at the very least take ballroom dancing lessons or something equivalent. When that happens, we let the couple take the lead and show us what they want! They can tell us more about what they are capable of doing then we can. This is when it gets fun with regard to dance poses. We just need to be ready with our cameras to capture the action. This type of shoot looks more natural since the couple is guiding the process and not trying to intently listen to our posing suggestions.

Posing Techniques For City Hall Wedding Photography

We talk a lot about posing throughout our website, but never really go into detail regarding how we really do it. There are a great many ways to show a couple how to pose and we have found that different techniques work better for certain couples while others might benefit from alternative approach. The best city hall wedding photographers can figure out how to help their newlyweds obtain the desired poses. This will lead to a better result and one that the couple will like better. Some of these poses involve Static technique and some involve Dynamic action. Static posing is where the couple mostly freeze in a particular position and wait for us to take the pictures. Dynamic involves the newlyweds moving in some fashion during the picture taking. Below is a list of some of the most basic techniques and their benefits:

• Tell the couple the pose that you want them to do in a simple yet detailed manner. Benefit: Many clients prefer verbal instructions because this is what they are used to and can understand. This is probably our most common way of posing. It works with most couples, but not all.
  
  
• Mirror the pose by actually displaying the ways we want their arms and legs positioned. Lilly often helps me with this one. Benefit: This technique works best with international couples when their is a slight language barrier. Also many people are more visual and prefer this type of instruction. This is only necessary with certain couples.
  
  
• Touching the couple and moving their arms/legs/heads in place. Benefit: This technique is less used these days because of privacy concerns, but honestly is a very fast and effective way of posing SF City Hall brides and grooms. In case you are wondering, we always ask before touching. Same goes for our stylist.
  
  
• Combination of the 3 above. Benefit: This is also a pretty effective way of helping our couple pose. We just use whatever technique works best for each couple and specific pose. The more complex the pose, the more we may use the "Combination method". The idea is to make it as easy as possible for the bride and groom to understand what we want. In addition, it gives our couple a chance to provide us feedback on what works for them and what types of things they would like to do.