Canoeing down a river involves strength, intelligence and common sense, however, canoeing of the subject’s eyes in photography, though acceptable at times, usually involves poor posing and bad camera angle. Sometimes canoeing in photography is unavoidable, but often canoeing is caused by not paying attention to detail in an image—photographers sometimes forget the eyes are the storytellers of the image.

Most canoeing is caused when the camera angle is high in relation to the subject’s pose. This high angle also causes the subject to appear shorter and heavier when simply moving the camera angle down below the model will not only help in eliminating canoeing, but causes the model to look thinner and much lighter.

Sometimes it’s the model that makes the canoeing of her eyes unavoidable in her own images, as sometimes a model will project a pose she feels makes her look sexy, designed more to soothe her self-esteem, but often the pose will appear awkward to the camera itself and it’s up to you the photographer to take the model’s pose and refine it while not negatively affecting her self-esteem. [Read more...]