Posing Like A Pro: Create Your Best Portraits Ever! Part 1 (Udemy.com)
Learn the Foundations of Poses That Will Flatter Your Subjects And Elevate Your Portrait Photography Skills
Created by: Sandy Dee
Last updated April 2020
What you will learn
- Evaluate Your Location / Your Subject / Your Lenses
- Create Great Shooting Concepts
- How To Use Props to Enhance Your Story
- Know the Difference Between Male and Female Posing
- How to Pose People with Weight Issues
- Know What to Do When Your Mind Goes Blank
How it compares
Against the other 275 rated Udemy courses in Photography on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.7 out of 5higher than 80% of them
- Reviews960#59 of 276 by number of reviews
- Length5.1 hourslonger than 75% of them
- Last updatedApril 2020earlier than 67% of them
Course Description
Featured Review:
"It is just perfect, we have a lot of well explained information with lots of samples and also the PDF... just get it trust me." Thank you Carlos Albert Martinez Gomez!
Welcome to our course “Posing Like A Pro: Create Your Best Portraits Ever”!
This is Part 1 of our posing series and is a ‘classroom’ style course, covering the 200 page eBook 'Posing Like A Pro'.
Make sure you download the PDF from lecture 4! I will talk through examples of great poses, bad poses, and things to look for - all supported by images and assignments from the book.
It's the perfect precursor to Part 2 of our posing series: "The Ultimate Posing Flow", which is a live photography studio session, showing you how to implement the poses with real models. Here we focus more on the "do's" than the "don'ts"
Why did I make this course?
Whilst teaching workshops I realized that most of the attending photographers were really savvy about photography techniques and new technology but would freeze when they had to pose the Model or would run out of ideas very quickly.
Nine times out of ten we had the following scenario:
Student talking to the Model: “Do this! Do something completely different! OK good, let’s go somewhere else”.
Me to the Student: “Why don’t you finetune the pose or develop it further?”
Student: “Well, I don’t know how….I don’t know anything about posing!”
So, that’s when I realized 2 things:
First: It was time to write my own book about posing to really break things down as much as possible!
And Second: Why not also turn this book into a tutorial so I could demonstrate all those poses and scenarios?
Because THIS way my photography students could take the book with them to their shoots (for some guidance and reference) AND also watch me demonstrating all those poses (plus seeing overlaid images to understand even better why some poses work and some don’t)
So, let me tell you a few things about “Posing Like A Pro”:
In this course you will learn ALL the THEORY about posing STEP-BY-STEP. You will learn to design poses that flatter your Model and your Client. You will understand the importance of animating the Model’s body and why it’s critical to the Success of Storytelling. Being a great Portrait Photographer means being able to create memorable images continuously AND on the spot. And this is exactly the No. 1 WORRY for many new (and even intermediate) photographers: How can you guarantee your Model or Clients these amazing images, that make them look like a million dollars - time after time after time? (And without that you need to freak out!)
This is why you will learn the following:
How to Evaluate Your Location / Your Subject / Your Lenses
How to Create Great Shooting Concepts
How to Pose the Body to Look Effortlessly Slim
How to Pose Your Model’s Hands in Flattering Ways
How to Use Props to Enhance Your Story
Learn the Difference Between Male and Female Posing
How to Pose People with Weight Issues
Learn about the Importance of the Right Light
What to Do When Your Mind Goes Blank
Why Different Photographic Styles Demand Different Posing
And So Much More!
At the end of “Posing Like A Pro” you will be able to flow through the poses, without your client looking stiff or unnatural and without your mind ever going blank. You will know all the tricks to accentuate your subject’s best features whilst integrating location, lighting and communication.
Also - Our little assignments will help you to practice your photography skills actively to really deepen your understanding of pro and cons of certain poses.
AND: In your course materials in Section 2 (Lecture 4) and again in the final Lecture, you will find a link to your own copy of “Posing Like A Pro” e-book (which includes even more secrets: For example the “7- ingredients-recipe” for producing outstanding photography!)
Intrigued? Ready to Create Your Best Portraits Ever?
Go ahead and watch our previews or - if you want to learn all our tricks right now:
Enroll into “Posing Like A Pro” and let’s get started in creating your own posing flow!
See you soon!
Sandy
_________________________
Some reviews:
"I really enjoyed Sandy's course, friendly explained the "how-to" and "why" with no bla-bla (means: not boring) to get the most flattering pictures of/for your clients. I think it covers everything for posing as summary of the greatest books about posing out there. Additionally you get the whole thing as PDF inside the course to download. Very professional, highly recommended !" - Peter Leinfellner
"amazing explanation and a phenomenal instructor" - Lisa Dubinsky
"What a fantastic set of material from someone who clearly has a lot of experience photographing all kinds of people and models. I love how Sandy clearly explains each topic and is very easy to follow and implement. Seems like a lot of instructors talk very high level, but she goes into each detail about posing, and has done a lot of research on the matter. Highly recommended." - Will Perez
Instructor Details
- 4.7 Rating
960 Reviews
Sandy Dee
Sandy is originally from Germany and studied Photography in London, where she earned a Diploma in Professional Photography. Following her passion for creative conceptual portrait photography, she moved to San Jose, California where she runs stylized portrait workshops, and wrote the book 'Posing Like A Pro' which covers all aspects of posing for the contemporary photographer.
Sandy loves teaching and helping other artists to reach new levels in their technique and creativity! New In 2021: Sandy now also teaches paper crafting. No matter if you want to learn photography, portraiture, photoshop, creating backdrops on a budget, paper crafting, card making, mixed media....Sandy has a class for you. Happy Shooting and Happy Crafting!
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Reviews
By denyoshio _ on 8/30/2025
Hello, I am a Japanese learner and I really enjoy your excellent course. I would love to recommend it to other models and photographers I know. Since many of them are not native English speakers, English subtitles would be very helpful. If possible, would you consider adding English subtitles? Thank you very much for your great work.
By Lester M. Chambers on 7/26/2023
This is a very good overall course in posing. Sandy did a great job of explaining and illustrating how to pose females, males and couples. After explaining a concept or pose, she took the time to tell you why the pose would work and also when not to use a certain pose. Resources were very good and the book she gives you is awesome! I feel like the last section #14 will be very helpful to students as it shows you her posing flow in action. Great job Sandy!
By Bernadette Chamberlin on 12/6/2020
I Learnt different positions that makes a difference in how a person appears in a photo,a simple shift in position can change how your pictures turn out.Thank you for the lessons
By Brandon on 10/25/2020
Great course
By Larissa Amber on 10/18/2020
So informative and inspiring!
By Caprilli Barber on 10/9/2020
I really like how she explains everything so far.
By James Schultz on 9/24/2020
There is some good content in here but I think it would be much more helpful if there were demonstrations of the techniques and concepts instead of just talking about them and showing a couple of quick example images. As a visual learner, I went through many of the videos and pretty much forgot them as soon as I watched them because the visual content was just not engaging.
By Jos Cndido Pereira da Rocha on 9/18/2020
The course is particularly good, it teaches how to model for photos pointing positions/stances that work for each part of the body, as well as what does not work and why. The photos in the examples look old, but the rules still greatly apply today.
By Amanda Awobasivwe on 9/17/2020
I love this so much.
By Burak Eser on 9/17/2020
ve learn too much thank you!!!!
By Katherine on 9/9/2020
The beginning appears to be a great introduction and overview of the subject matter. Looking forward to the learning next!
By Sean McLean on 8/15/2020
I enjoy hearing the presenter's voice and her first-hand experience. I would dearly like to see more examples or clips of photo sessions with some discussion about lighting (even if cursory). A description of a concept is reinforced with a visual. There are some visuals provided in the section about photographing couples, however this can be far more complicated when you consider lighting or even depth of field (1 person is easy, 2 now probably needs much more depth of field for both to be in focus) which so far isn't discussed. Granted the discussion is about posing, however a great pose won't be relevant if your subject is not in focus.
Quality Score
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Overall Score : 94 / 100












