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As a model your most important skill is posing! ​

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Posing is not only about putting your body in a certain shape and form. It really is about acting. With the movement of your body and facial expressions you have to express emotions, situations and all your feelings have to transpire across the photograph. There’s a big difference between showing your emotions only and getting a reaction from your audience. Your audience is the people who will be looking at that photograph in a magazine or a catalog. The best way to put it is the difference between your eyes saying “I love you” or “I want you to love me”. This is what great acting coaches teach their students in the very beginning. Getting an emotional reaction out of the audience is the difficult part.
It is very important that you establish a connection with the photographer during the photoshoots. It is also important that you put yourself entirely into a given situation and establish where you are. If you’re shooting in a studio with a paper background and flash lights and wearing a bikini then you want to imagine yourself on the beach; you have to feel the breeze on your skin, the sand between your toes, you have to feel the sun and you have to hear the murmur of the ocean. Add to this the situation you’re in. You may be just chilling on the beach, you may be looking at someone you really like or you’re just being a diva and don’t care about anything. Or you may be shooting in a wedding dress. The happiness and excitement and the glow that comes with that situation has to be written all over you.

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Besides the acting part there’s also the actual posing. There are a ton of standard poses that models use every day. Best way to learn these poses is to look at fashion magazines. Get yourself a copy of the latest French Vogue, Numéro and Harper’s Bazaar. Pick a few photos and try to re-create the exact same pose. That includes the position of the body, the fingers, the eyes, the lips, the toes and pretty much every single little detail. Practice these poses in front of a mirror and then have someone take photo when you think you’re close to the pose that you want to re-create. Find all the small little differences and practice and do it until you get it 100%. You will see that sometimes the most simple poses are the most difficult because it’s about all the subtleties.
A good model knows at least 50 poses and a dozen of facial expression and can switch between them by the second. Many poses are just small variations of the same thing, yet they all look different. So start building up your repertoire because when you’re already on the photo shoot you’re expected to know many many poses and facial expressions.
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