How to Add Motion to Your Fashion Shoots | Inside Fashion and Beauty Photography with Lindsay Adler

In fashion photography, it is easy for everything to start looking ‘pose-y’ and static. Adding movement to your fashion shoots can breathe life and energy into your images, yet it can be hard to control! Imagine your subject twirling around to create a billow to a dress… it can be really hard to get the dress, the expression, and the pose to all come together successfully with such random motion. Instead, I suggest prompts that coach the subject into smaller, repeatable movements. The key concept here is repeatability! If it is a movement the subject can do over and over again, this allows me to coach small tweaks to the pose each time until we get the perfect shot!

Here are my three most common prompts:

1. Bounce step

The subject simply bounces back and forth from one foot to the other, stepping back and forth. Each step allows repeatability and you can change the hand placement, expression, and more to create variety.

1. Snap to Pose

Pose the subject in their final position (with the body in place as desired). Then, ask the subject to move away from the pose and then ‘snap’ into place. This could be winding the body up (like turning around), putting the head down (and then lifting up), or a variety of other motions. This allows the subject to introduce movement to the hair, dress, or other element but still end up in the desired body position.

1. Fall through

The subject lifts one knee up (parallel to the ground) and shifts their weight to ‘fall through’ a step. You can capture a shot at the height of the pose or just being the subject steps onto the ground. It can help create dramatic, lunge-type steps that are repeatable.

Want to learn more about adding motion to your fashion and beauty photos? Check out these guides on 42 West:

• How to Capture Motion Blur in Photography
• Camera Basics: Understanding Shutter Speed

PRODUCTS USED:

• Canon R5
• Canon RF 24-70mm 2.8