Female librarian peers out over the top of her glasses and smiles at the viewer. She is sitting in front of rows upon rows of books.
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7 Brand Portrait Prompts I Use in Every Photo Session (and Why They Work)

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If you landed here hunting for a prompt to paste into a chatbot, hang on for a minute. I’m a photographer, and these are the prompts I say out loud to real humans while we’re making photos together.

Here’s the thing about posing: a stiff pose is a pose someone told you to hold. When the pose is a natural movement, you relax, and the person in the photo starts looking like the person your clients would meet over coffee. That’s where the realness shines through, which is what makes your portraits interesting and beautiful.

Clothes, hair, and makeup all help. However, what makes a portrait come alive is the energy behind it. (If you want the bigger picture of how I think about this, my top 3 (un)posing rules are a great place to start.)

3 rules for (un)posing

7 POSING PROMPTS i use to help people get out of their heads:

  • “Give me a fake laugh.” A fake laugh turns into a real one about four seconds later. Almost every time, especially because I’ll laugh right along with you. Nobody can fake-laugh at a camera without feeling a little ridiculous, and ridiculous is great for portraits.
  • “Say hello back to me.” I say hi, you say hi. Suddenly you’re talking to a person instead of a lens, and the connection shows up in your face.
  • “Lean towards me.” This one reads as someone who is listening and tuned in to the viewer. If that viewer is a future client, that’s exactly the energy you want them to feel.
  • “Walk toward me… now walk backward.” Movement loosens everything up, and I’m moving right along with you, so you never feel like you’re performing alone. Some of the best frames come from the in-between steps.
  • “Lean on that wall and picture the version of you you want to be a year from now.” Your restaurant is now the celebrity hotspot where world leaders book tables. You’re the new CEO. You’re the person everyone calls when their problem is in your specialty. Whatever it is, we run with it, and your posture and expression follow your imagination. Dream big.
  • “Sit on that counter, cross your ankles, and swing your feet out in front of you.” It takes you out of the formal portrait posture and puts you in a relaxed, slightly kid-on-a-kitchen-counter position.
  • “Scratch behind your ear.” Or “Button your jacket.” See what I did there? Your hands finally have a job. Hands are the most common source of posing panic, and giving them a task fixes it.
  • Woman entrepreneur works at her laptop in a cafe
  • Man in blue suit leans on chair with wrists crossed and smiles at the viewer with the Chicago city visible out the window behind him.
  • Alex Goodfellow, director of Share Our Spare poses in the warehouse as volunteers work in the background

Using these without me

You can borrow every one of these. Hand the list to a friend holding your phone, or read it to yourself before a session so your brain has something to do besides worry about your face. If you’re going the DIY route, I wrote up when DIY works and when it doesn’t, and my phone photography workshops are built for exactly this.

One tip that applies to all seven: move between frames. Shake out your shoulders, laugh at yourself, change your weight from one foot to the other. The keeper is usually the one right after you stop trying.

About those AI prompts

I get why you’re here. Typing a description into a tool and getting a polished face back is fast, and it makes sense to be curious. Here’s what I’d keep in mind: a text prompt can describe a smile, but it can’t make you laugh at a terrible joke, and that laugh is the thing people connect with. A lot of AI portraits also start to look alike, which is the opposite of what a personal brand needs. You also never actually have any usage rights that are strictly for your own business…on an image that resembles you. I dug into this in AI headshots: are they worth it? if you want the long version.

Want someone to say these to you?

The prompts above are the warm-up. When we work together, the session is built around moments like these, and you leave with a library of images that make you look like you after the best night’s rest. Take a look at personal brand portraits or business brand photography to see how it works. Or schedule a virtual coffee to tell me what you’re working on. (I keep it sales pitch-free because I’m genuinely curious. I may or may not be the photographer for you, and that’s totally fine by me.)

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