- Myriam Menard is a wedding and elopement photographer.
- She went viral on TikTok for one of her photography tips: pretending to be drunk for photos.
A wedding photographer revealed the secret to looking natural in photos on TikTok: pretend to be drunk.
Myriam Menard, 41, is a Montreal-based wedding and elopement photographer. She travels all over the world taking photos of couples, and she's owned her own business, Crémeux Photo, for six years.
She says she works to create "emotional imagery" that is "warm, authentic, and intimate."
In April, Menard was in Sint Maarten to scout photo locations, and she did a styled elopement shoot with real couple and models Claudia Soria Marín and Stefano García, as Menard told Insider.
They shot photos in a variety of locations, but for one portion of the session, Menard had Marín and García pose on a hillside. As they posed, she made a seemingly strange request of them: pretend to be drunk and walk down the hill.
Although the posing hack might sound surprising to anyone who has taken photos when they're actually drunk, Menard told Insider it can be an effective way to get people to loosen up in photos.
"They lose themselves," Menard said of what happens to subjects when she tells them to pretend to be drunk. "They just forget that I'm around or they're doing a photo shoot."
"Everyone's awkward in front of the camera," she went on to say. "I just wanna make them forget that they're here for a shoot, so they're kind of just getting loose and having fun."
That natural energy also makes the photos look candid and fun, as Menard's work shows.
Menard thinks the trick makes people look good because they capture a real moment of joy.
"They're just natural," she told Insider. "They're not posing. They're creating a real moment."
Marín said she had never had a photographer ask her to pose drunk before, but she thought it would be fun and "fell in love" with the trick when she saw the finished photos.
Menard posted behind-the-scenes videos of the shoot on TikTok, and people were fascinated by the hack.
A TikTok of Marín and García walking down the hill in the shoot has over 15.5 million views to date, and a follow-up has over 5 million views.
@cremeuxphoto Anyone else do this? #poseideas #elopementphotographer #photoshootposes #phototips #couplephotoshoot ♬ omg she may be insane - Troy
Menard said she was surprised her videos became so popular.
"I wasn't expecting it, but I was excited at the same time," she told Insider of her reaction.
Although the trick is a go-to for Menard, she said she always makes sure her clients are comfortable with the topic of alcohol before she incorporates the trick into a shoot, and if they aren't, she has plenty of other ways to make couples loosen up.
For instance, another of her favorite moves is to secretly tell one person to pretend they have lost their sense of smell and are trying to remember their partner's scent as they take photos.
"I love this trick because sometimes the person is just smelling their partner super softly and super tenderly, and it gets really quiet and intimate, but sometimes it's totally the opposite," she said. "The partner is just getting crazy and is smelling, doing noises, so it can be really different from one partner to another. So I love it because it makes it more personal to them."
But most importantly, Menard says the key to a good photo shoot is just making your clients feel comfortable.
"I noticed a lot of couples are afraid before their engagement shoot or elopement if we haven't met yet," she said. "They're afraid that we're going to pose and they're going to feel awkward. So I try to reassure my couples that it's going to be fun, that we are going to be silly, and that we don't take it too seriously."