"Just be natural." Watch what happens to a person's body when you say it: shoulders rise, hands die, the face assembles itself into a polite mask. You have asked for spontaneity on command — the one thing no nervous human can produce.
Directing is a craft skill, as learnable as lighting. The difference between an experienced director of people and a silent shutter-presser is not charisma. It is a vocabulary — a set of cues that produce physical, repeatable results. Here is a working one.
The principle: verbs, not adjectives
Adjectives describe the result you want; verbs describe an action the model can execute. "Look confident" is an adjective request — it makes people perform confidence, badly. "Push your weight onto the back foot and drop the front shoulder" is a verb — and it happens to look confident on camera.
Every cue that works is an action, a direction, or an image the body can follow. Every cue that fails is a demand for an emotion.
Openers: the first ten minutes
The first frames of any shoot are throwaways — say so out loud. "First ten minutes are just a warm-up, none of these count" removes the pressure of permanence, and paradoxically produces the first keepers.
- Start in motion. "Walk towards me, turn at the tape mark, walk back." Movement burns nerves and hands occupy themselves naturally.
- Give the hands a job immediately: a jacket collar, a bag strap, a pocket. Empty hands are where stiffness lives.
- Shoot through your talking. Keep the shutter going while giving cues — the frames between poses are often the shoot's best.
The angle cues
- "Nose towards the window, eyes back to me." Separating nose direction from eye direction is the single highest-value cue in portraiture. It creates the turned, engaged look people can't produce from a face-on start.
- "Ear towards that shoulder — a centimetre, not more." Head tilts read enormous on camera. Ask in centimetres.
- "Chin down and towards me." Never just "chin down" — that alone creates a double chin. The forward component stretches the jawline. Some directors say "turtle, then tilt": push the face slightly forward, then drop the chin.
- "Show me the line from ear to shoulder." Asks the model to lengthen the neck without ever saying "your neck looks short".
The body cues
- "All the weight on the back leg." Weight distribution is posture. Weight on the back leg angles the hips, drops one shoulder, and unlocks the front leg for shaping — one cue, three fixes.
- "If it bends, bend it." The old rule works because straight limbs read as tension. A soft elbow, a broken wrist line, a bent knee — each adds a curve the camera loves.
- "Create space between your arm and your body." A fist of air at the waist. Arms pressed to the torso flatten and widen everything; the gap restores the silhouette.
- "Turn your body away, bring your face back." The three-quarter body with returned gaze is the most reliable silhouette in the book — narrower body, engaged eyes.
The hands problem
Hands are what separates directed frames from awkward ones, and no model — new or seasoned — escapes the question "what do I do with my hands?" Answers that work:
- Give them an object or a surface: collar, hem, wall, own hair, other hand. Touched things anchor hands naturally.
- "Touch, don't grab." Fingertips, not fists. A hand gripping a lapel is a stressed hand; fingertips resting on it are an editorial.
- "Show me the side of the hand, not the back." The flat back of a hand towards camera is a paddle; the pinkie edge is a line.
- "Wrists loose, like you've just shaken water off." The shake itself photographs well too.
Emotion without asking for emotion
You cannot cue "look happy" and get anything but a waiter's smile. You can cue actions that produce expressions:
- "Close your eyes. Open them on three, straight into the lens." The half-second after eyes open is unguarded and alive — shoot exactly then.
- "Exhale through your mouth, drop your shoulders on the way out." The exhale relaxes the face genuinely; the end of it is your frame.
- "Laugh badly. Worst fake laugh you can do." The fake laugh is useless; the real one that follows it in two seconds is the shot.
- Give a scenario, not a feeling: "you've spotted someone you know across the street and you're not sure it's them" beats "look intrigued" every time.
Feedback that keeps the shoot alive
- Never go silent. Silence behind a camera is read as disapproval within seconds. A stream of "yes — that — hold — good" is oxygen.
- Show the back of the camera (or the tethered screen) when something works. One look at a good frame recalibrates a nervous model better than five minutes of talk.
- Correct by redirection, not negation. "Let's try the chin a touch lower" beats "no, not like that". The model cannot see themselves; every "wrong" without a "towards what" just adds fear.
- Bank the wins. "We already have the shot — everything from here is a bonus" is the cue that produces the best twenty minutes of any session.
Before the shoot: the two-minute contract
The best direction starts before the first frame: agree on the story ("today is soft and slow, low energy, editorial"), show three reference images, and ask the model what angles they know work for them — experienced models carry expertise most photographers never think to request. Direction is a dialogue with a vocabulary, not a monologue with a shutter.
Practise the phrasebook on set — find a model for a test through the TFP section, or browse model portfolios and pitch a concept.
