Foundations of Posing: A Comprehensive Guide for Wedding and Portrait Photographers

by Pierre Stephenson

Unless you are shooting a flat, almost two-dimensional scene that is parallel to the camera’s focal plane, wide-angle lenses will typically accentuate the depth in your image, making the foreground elements appear closer and the background farther away. The closer you are to your subject (or anything in the foreground), the more obvious this perspective distortion will be. Up close, wide-angle lenses have a tendency to stretch and warp foreground subjects. By stepping away and moving your subject closer to the background you can avoid much of this effect—however, your subject will become smaller in the scene. Standard Lenses Changing to a standard focal length, usually 50mm to 70mm, can be a good compromise to avoid distortion, maintain a moderate working distance, and still have some depth perception. Some portrait and environmental photographers swear by their 50mm lens because it can provide a versatile angle of view with beautiful optics and a very shallow depth of field. It is also a close representation of what we see with our eyes.