JZA B1 wrote:
Which style is easier? Can it be made to look authentic if your subjects are posing? Is it more about the skill of the photographer or the "model"? (With most people not being professional models.)
Can a good photographer with non-models produce natural-looking but posted photographs?
Or should you try to shoot candid pictures if you want natural look and forget trying to pose people?
Well your question is "Which Style is easier"
If your question had been "Which style is easier to do WELL", my answer would have been neither.
In my opinion, getting good pictures of ANY kind has a considerable degree of difficulty, Good pictures of People is harder still. Good pictures can be posed or unposed (or candid).
If we discount for the moment the candid snapshots we all make of every day events or Birthdays or holidays which have their own value to our families and make the assumption you are asking about more formal photographic intent of getting better pictures of people in general, I would say first it is not one or the other, you need to be able to do both. We have all seen lots of bad examples of both types, consistently good pictures of people is a skill that can be learned. In "posed pictures' you have some control of Location, where and how a person appears in that location, and where You position yourself relative to both, and When/if you press the button.
In Candid pictures you only have the latter, your position relative to the subject and weather or not you press the button. Great pictures have been made both ways. Neither is easy.
Learning to pose and light people is a little like learning to play the violin--- you are going to get a lot of ugly stuff before you get good stuff. ....and no one even questions that with the violin
If you look at great art or great photographs, you will see that humans look better in certain positions than others.
But if you force that, it will look forced. Good People photographers can often direct in very subtle ways, 'take a step towards me', They stand mostly where they want people to look. They make lots of eye contact, they engage in real conversation.
None of this is about 'which is easier'
Notice we have not spoken about Portraits, which is a slightly different skill and best done as a collaboration.
It only stands to reason, that if you read an article about posing and try it, you will likely get a bunch of bad pictures, BUT you will learn something from it, and, if you persist you will get better pictures. But what is more, over time you begin to recognize when people fall into these positions naturally, and you will get better "Unposed" pictures too.
The more consciously you work at this the better you get.
Get Books of great People photographers, Karsh, Penn, Newman, Avedon, Liebovitz, Heisler and just let them sink in.
I sincerely mean this as encouragement, being good at anything requires work, but Getting Good is very satisfying.
One of the previous comments mentioned Malcom Gladwell and his 10,000 hour book (Outliers??)
But the actual photographic quote is from Henri Cartier-Bresson and was "Your first 10,000 Photographs are your worst" Which does not mean that there are not lots good pictures among them, what it really means is that it takes a significant amount of work to be more consistently Good
Good luck
Take pictures