If you follow the steps outlined below, you’re going to look your best on your special day.

Kudos goes to Ryan Schembri for these posing techniques, someone who has had so much influence on my photography.

Turn your body away from the light source

Turn your chin into the light source

From here, the pose starts with your feet and legs. So turning your body away from the direction of light, with the front toe (the one that’s closest to the camera), point that to the photographer.

We then go up the leg and with the knee, we bend and cross that front knee over the back knee. We then put our weight on our back knee. We also make sure there’s some separation between the waist and both elbows to further accentuate the curves of the waist.

Again, turn, point, bend, knee.

Then the upper body (not the lower body) needs to turn to the light. You then lean in and tilt the head and turn the chin up to the light (as the light usually comes from above eye level). Turning the chin up to the light also means no double chins and illuminates the eyes with beautiful catchlights.

This takes the biggest part of your body away from the camera and pushes it away (making it smaller). More importantly, though, pushing the face into the light means the face kisses the light firsthand becomes the brightest point of the image.

The other point to make here is that we accentuate the curves with this posing.

Finally, to guarantee we won’t need to Photoshop you at all, if you keep your elbows behind the waist (not out from the waist), we open up the gap and we don’t cause your arms to look bigger by pressing them into your sides.