Five Posing Principles That Will Transform Your High School Senior Sessions

Five Posing Principles That Will Transform Your High School Senior Sessions

Senior portrait work doesn’t get nearly enough respect in commercial photography circles. I’ll admit I used to dismiss it as a stepping stone genre, something photographers do before they land “real” clients. Then I spent a Saturday watching Lindsay Adler walk through her posing framework for high school senior girls in a CreativeLive tutorial, and I came away with notes I’ve since applied to fashion and editorial sessions. The principles are transferable in ways that surprised me.

Clamshell Lighting Done Wrong (On Purpose): What Lindsay Adler's Bodybuilder Setup Taught Me About Muscle Definition

Clamshell Lighting Done Wrong (On Purpose): What Lindsay Adler's Bodybuilder Setup Taught Me About Muscle Definition

I keep a lighting journal. Every setup from every shoot gets a rough sketch, a note about the modifier, and a one-line summary of what the light was actually doing to the subject. I have notebooks going back twelve years. The reason I do it is simple: lighting decisions that feel obvious in the moment become invisible six months later, and you end up reinventing the same wheel on every job.