How to Work With a Swimsuit Model part 2.5 of 3

The more sensual photos. Ahh, well just a moment...

There are a lot of aspects to working with a swimsuit model and I’ve covered a few things that will help you get better photos.  

Before I talk about a few specific photos, I wanted to talk about the human beings you are photographing and the “how to” of working “with” them.

Models don’t want to deal with a GWC, and they deserve better. Photographing models, swimsuit or otherwise, is not an opportunity to gawk and ogle. It is work and requires collaboration. Newer models may need your help. They may need re-assurance that they are doing a good job, that they look good, or other confidence building assurance.

Be careful of how you talk to your model. Build her confidence with kind words, but I suggest you avoid making her feel like a piece of photographic meat. Don’t go overboard telling her how sexy she is, nor should you make any kind of vulgar comments. Duh! Tell her she is pretty, or that her eyes pop, or that she nailed a pose. I avoid talking about her body. She knows she has one. Focus on the work.

Always work to get a great image, help the model figure out what to do with her hands, arms, legs, feet, face, hair, etc. You are the one responsible for her looking good. You have to watch to make sure that a pose doesn’t make her look flabby. Even the slimmest, most fit girls can look bad with a bad pose or camera angle. The model may not be aware of how things look from the camera’s point of view.

I’m not spending time here on posing. We’ll save that for another time. But, you should have a good idea of how to make the human body look interesting.  Should the model cross her legs, or have her knee bent, or twist her torso? Should her chin be up, down, left, right etc? Should she arch her back, look over her shoulder, let her back sink? That is all up to you. If you have a good model, she will figure out a lot of this herself, but she will still need feedback from you to get the poses that make her look best.

If you haven’t shot swimsuit before, you should study other great examples. There are a ton. SI is the bible on this subject. Find work that you like and figure out what it is that makes the shot great? Is it the pose, the colors, the setting? Maybe it is the light, is the photo cropped or does it include the whole body? Get a good idea of what poses work and how you are going to get them before you get to the shoot.

Another key, and a lot of guys miss this, myself included: Keep the eyes in focus. The photos of a beautiful girl in a bikini is lost if the chest is in focus but the eyes are not. People communicate with the eyes, not body parts.

Next post will be on getting the sensual pose and light to make knock out bikini photographs.