Ah, to wear a suit jacket or not. I feel like half of my clients walk in with a blazer on a hanger and a questioning face as to if it’s a good idea or not. They don’t want to appear stuffy or too serious and formal, but also want to portray professionalism.

I recently photographed a headshot sessions for a young woman that gave me the idea to write this post and maybe inspire any professional to wear a suit jacket for one of their looks.

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Start with something out of the ordinary

…Like hanging your jacket off of one shoulder and adding different poses to it. In these images, Carson has let her blazer stay on one shoulder while putting her hand in her pocket, propped on the side of her torso and also letting her arm stay straight down. You could even add a couple more poses to this like swinging her arm back and forth to mimic walking down the street, sitting down and propping her elbow up on her knee or even letting her arm hang down toward her feet. There are so many ways to move while simply positioning her jacket in a different way.

Make the traditional way look different with unique hand and arm positions

Carson chose a blazer that was longer, not too fitted, and paired it with a traditional button down shirt and modern leather pants. Having a little extra length in her jacket added more dimension to the poses like being able to put both hands in the front pockets without having to scrunch her arms too high. Then, we propped her hand on the side of her torso (much like when her jacket was on one shoulder) and photographed different camera angles from the side and with her facing straight toward my lens. We also found that moving the blazer around in unique ways gave us more options for her hands to be active: one hand in pocket while the other one swoops the jacket to the side, pushing the jacket fully behind her back and putting both hands on her torso or hips, and even putting one hand behind her back while the other arm swings from side to side.

Other traditional poses made modern

At the end of our shoot, I came up with two other ways that would be really cool and modernize the traditional blazer:

1. Take your arms out of your jacket and lay it over your shoulders (like you’re borrowing your partner’s suit jacket at a wedding to keep you warm)

2. Tie the arms of a blazer across your front (like the way a seatbelt comes across your chest), sit down or prop yourself on the top of a chair, and photograph different angles around your front and side

There are so many ways to style a blazer to make you look modern, creative, and unique! I will more photos as I photograph different subjects. :)

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