One of the questions that I have heard most times in my life is the one that gives the title to this post: “What do I do with my arms?”. During a photo shoot it is very common for the model I work with to ask me this question. Since I mostly work with women, this post is dedicated especially to them. For this purpose I decided to ask Dariia Lola for help, a dance teacher with whom I have collaborated a couple of times.
She made a few suggestions and we made a small series of photos to show examples of how to work to achieve the best results in a photo session, whether outdoors or mainly in the studio.
One of the first questions is to determine what you should do with your hands. The softer the position, the better, and we will avoid showing our palms whenever possible and offer our backs, always seeking relaxation so as not to transmit tension. If the palms have to appear, due to the position of the arm, you should avoid it being frontal.
Another key issue is to always offer obtuse or acute angles with your arm: you have to avoid a right angle, 90º, because it always gives a less natural, more forced image.
Hands should always touch very gently, even brush, never press. That will avoid unwanted shapes. In general, you should avoid tense muscles and work with a relaxed body and limbs. The exception to this will be when you want, for expressive reasons, to generate a feeling of tension. In this case you must keep the active muscles visible and show the contact of the hand against the skin.
More ideas about what to do with your arms
To make the arms look stylized, it is also usually interesting to avoid directing them directly towards the camera when they are flexed, because they tend to convey a greater sensation of volume.
Keeping your shoulders balanced will convey harmony and calm. Having one higher than the other will help us manage expressiveness and dynamism: one thing is not better than the other, they are options that we will choose to achieve our objectives.
We must also remember that the hands will allow us to guide the observer’s gaze. This can make a figure, face, object or space stand out in the photograph. So they are an expressive resource that will help us and that we have learned to use a little better in this post.
All of these tips are suggestions. Later, when working in front of the camera, they can be omitted because we are looking for a certain composition that, at first glance, is interesting. It is not a question of taking them literally.
I hope I have answered your question “What do I do with my arms?” In any case, we leave here a small gallery with some options for managing the arms. If you need more than what is in this post, Dariia is a dance teacher. You can contact her on Instagram, @dariialola. If what you need is a professional photo session, you can send me an email to sergi@archerphoto.eu, contact me on Instagram (@Archerphoto) or send me a Whatsapp or Telegram to +34 644459753.
