Last Updated: February 14th, 2020

Disclaimer: We were provided a review copy of The Couples Candid Posing Guide by Signature Edits. In order to provide you a quality review of this guide, we put it to the test during some recent engagement shoots in order to better measure our couple’s response to the prompts used, and showcase images that resulted from it’s use throughout this article.

Couples photography has been a passion of ours for the past several years.

In order to capture the best images possible, we’ve pulled on a variety of techniques to better engage our couples into a type of photography that feels less forced, and more about them and their natural interactions.

One of the most significant ways we’ve been able to live this approach in our actions is by learning how to pose our couples through the use of prompts.

This is a significant change when compared with old school photographers (you know: the one’s that took our parent’s wedding photos), because the posing approach that was taken back then was very stiff and formal looking, and while that approach worked well enough, it didn’t always transfer over the couple’s personality in the resulting images. In a phrase, these photos didn’t seem to be authentic.

In an effort to break through into the saturated world of couples photography, and provide a fun and engaging experience for our couples, we took to learning ways to pose that would come across as less forced, more natural, and more in tune with our couples personalities.

In a significant way, we were out to capture real authentic moments of our couples.

About Signature Edit’s The Couples Candid Posing Guide

Signature Edit’s The Couples Candid Posing Guide has turned out to be a useful resource that is helping us to better achieve the goal of capturing authenticity in our couples through a more refined posing technique.

You should know, in our reality, this resource joins a number of other posing guides we have come to own over the years such as the Unposed Field Guide. At their core, these products offer something quite simple: prompts meant to be memorable that can be used while shooting couples.

In our experience, only some of these posing guides are actually valuable. Only some are actionable.

The Couples Candid Posing Guide by Signature Edit is one of these valuable guides for us.

There are a few reasons why we feel this way. The inclusion of a 17 page tips and best practices document, which discusses how to actually apply the prompts to your couple’s photography sessions, helps to set the stage for using the prompts in the real world.

One mistake often made with this type of product is simply providing the prompts themselves without any context. We know from experience that how you relay the prompts is just as important as what you are saying – and this background perspective helps for sure.

How are the prompts?

The first time we opened The Couples Candid Posing Guide, we were immediately impressed by the size of the document. Spanning 93 pages, this guide features a large number of prompts and corresponding images showing the results in action. This sticks out in our mind when compared to another prompt guide we purchased just a few months ago (at a comparable price point), but was underwhelming to say the least.

Because this type of document is pretty easy to produce, it’s incredibly important to provide something unique and of value to people really looking for a way to better their couple’s photography. For us, this begins by providing a reasonable quantity of prompts.

Of course, the quantity of prompts isn’t the only thing that matters. Are they actually any good?

In short: yes.

The longer answer? These prompts are, on the whole, easy to remember (not too long) and are applicable to how we want our couples to interact with each other.

The prompts are broken up into 3 sections:

• Try Not to Laugh

• Tender Moments

• Action + Adventure

Because of this simple break out, we can go use prompts based on the type of interaction and response we want our couples to showcase in front of our cameras. There is a time for all types of emotions as we aspire to capture those authentic interactions a couple will share. Whether trying to elicit laughter, capture a really serious and romantic shot, or get the couple moving and interacting more heavily – this guide is really actionable.

Example prompts:

Below are some example prompts found packed into The Couples Candid Posing Guide.

We provide these here so you can get a sense of what you can expect from the full version of the guide!

Testing Out The Couples Candid Posing Guide Prompts

A posing guide would be really difficult to properly review without applying the tips and prompts in the real world.

When we received our copy of the guide from Signature Edits, we printed it out and reviewed it – then decided to apply the techniques and prompts to some engagement sessions we already had lined up on our calendar. You should know, we already have a number of “go to” prompts, but after a long wedding and engagement season – these have started to feel a little stale for us, so it was a perfect time to get exposed to some new prompts to put to the test.

How we used the prompts during our engagement sessions

We use a mixed posing method when it comes to posing our couples that includes a combination of more formal posing and prompts. We talk about this process in our post The Ultimate Guide to Couples Photography.

At the times when we opt to use prompts, we decided to exclusively use those found in this posing guide so we can see in the resulting images and reactions from our couples how they worked for us.

As we don’t like to pull out our phones or a document like this in front of our couples, we memorized a few for immediate access, and kept a copy of the guide printed out in our photography gear bag & car for quick reference while we swapped out our lenses or had to drive to a different location during the shoot. This is a more inconspicuous way to remind ourselves of prompts we want to use, without having to give the impression we’re trying out something totally new in front of our clients.

Example images we took using prompts from The Couples Candid Posing Guide:

In this section, we are going to share with you the results of images we took while using prompts from this guide. The results are stellar (in our humble opinion), and do a great job to showcase a wide range of emotions from our couples. Most importantly, it highlights their personalities in a really authentic way.

Last Thoughts

Signature Edit’s The Candid Couples Posing Guide is an excellent choice if you need access to quality prompts that can be applied to your future photography shoots with couples involved. It’s a great option if this is the first posing guide you’ve purchased, or if you’ve been let down by posing guides in the past because it provides good value for the cost.

As you can see from our review, we took this guide to heart and applied it to some of our shoots. The prompts are easy to remember, and even easier to put into practice. The response we received from our couples was very positive, and their images have turned out to be really beautiful, too!

If you’re goal is to capture natural and authentic interactions between the couple your shooting, this guide is absolutely worth the investment, so check this out!

You can purchase the full guide, or if you want a taste first – check out The Candid Couples Posing Guide Freebie, which includes 8 great prompts.