The Art of Posing - by Lou Jacobs, Jr.

I just put down The Art of Posing, by Lou Jacobs Jr. Published in 2010. I read this primarily to prepare for my friend's engagement photo session. As a rule, I jump right into a book, based more or less on the name and the cover. Call me crazy, but I break the age-old adage and make my entire determination based on these 2 factors. Primarily because in this busy get-up-and-go world, I don't have nearly as much time to read the back cover of the book, or flip through it as I would like.

That being said... the tagline "Techniques for Digital Portrait Photographers" was a little misleading, I feel. The book has a short 10 pages of tripe, before getting into the main contents of the book. A form of Question & Answer. The "author" chose 10 photographers, seemingly at random, to pose a number of questions to. Perhaps via email, without a true back and forth. The questions can be readily displayed here:

About your background
Describe your studio
Your specialties
Getting acquainted with the client
First portrait poses
Encouraging improvisation
Inspiring good poses
The importance of lighting
Using props
Discussing what you are doing
Facial flaws and excess weight
Teen poses
Posing young children
Posing groups
Clothing for portraits
Digital alterations
Body language
Cameras, lenses, flash and backgrounds

That's it. These questions, asked of 10 different local photographers from portrait studios around the country. Each answer 1 - 2 paragraphs. Call me crazy, but I didn't find the book all that useful. While there was a line or two of interest, nothing really head turning. A few good images from some of the different photographers, but nothing striking. It was somewhat interesting to see a few techniques that all of the photographers do, but certainly that could have been stated by the author as "studies show 85% of photographers believe building a rapport with your client will make them feel more at ease.".

I'm not saying this isn't a useful book. At this stage in my learning, I'm still very green - and while the text deals with quite basics issues, I felt that more attention could have been given to diversifying the material, instead of just having 10 separate people say basically the same thing.