Photography Tips: How to pose in a wheelchair

Photography Tips: How to pose in a wheelchair

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blogging, body, disability, fashion, lifestyle, photo, photography

One of the trickiest parts of taking a good ootd photo is posing. Add being plus size (ish) & in a wheelchair to that & it becomes a fine art. It's also something I have searched for advice on & have found absolutely nothing....so I thought I should probably share what little I've managed to work out ^^ Hopefully it'll be helpful to a few of you ^^

Okay so the basic premise of posing is to make your body look as good as possible, a.k.a. well proportioned, slim & without too many chins ^^ The best post I read on 'normal' posing is this one from wear & where &, honestly, it's where I learnt all the theory behind my tips.

Wheelchair Positioning

As far as posing in a wheelchair goes, getting the wheelchair looking right is pretty essential. There are an awful lot of angles from which wheelchairs look BAD! And when I'm saying bad I mean really bad. Trial & error has taught me that the best angle to take photos from is 45 degrees; the wheelchair is still visible so you don't look shrunken but the wheelchair is not so visible that it makes you look weird.

Head on is a pretty good as an angle too but be careful because unless the wheelchair is at least a little bit visible you'll end up just looking really short & kind of wide which is not flattering believe you me ^^

Posing

The most important part of posing is good posture: straight back, pulled back shoulders & an elongated neck. In the wheelchair it is also good to sit at an angle because otherwise you can look kind of L-shaped or....like a staircase you know? If you sit at an angle you elongate & look almost as tall as you would stood up ^^

One of the least flattering things about the way a person sits in a wheelchair is the way you look with your feet, one on each footplate. I wear a lot of skirts so it's extra unflattering...so I started putting both feet on one footplate & now I do it even when I'm not wearing a skirt. I just find that it looks a lot better in photos & full stop looks more feminine ^^

The final posing tip is this: keep space between your arms & your body otherwise it all merges & you end up looking double the width which does not look pretty. It doesn't have to be as much space as in the above picture, a little goes a long way, but any space help ^^

Extras

I'll go over camera angles another time so the last things I have to talk about are how to position your hands & how to arrange a skirt.
If you don't have anything to do with your hands they can end up looking marginally claw like so until you've gotten used to making your hands actually look casual you might want to use a prop or do something in the pictures like apply lipstick or sort your hair.

Skirts can be tricky, particularly if they are long or a soft fabric... Most clothes rely on gravity to hang right & on movement to look pretty but in a wheelchair neither is working to your advantage so positioning is how you level the playing field. The aim is to create movement like folds in the skirt & to stop the skirt from getting between your legs, emphasising your stomach or puffing up around the side of your body....it's easier said than done & like most of these things it's a matter of trial & error & finding a style that works for you.

blogging, body, disability, fashion, lifestyle, photo, photography

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