Models can smell fear

[caleb]

I did not expect such a timely quality response. Thank you. Sorry to toss all these questions out at once, but here it goes:

Tips for helping to direct posing? Clearly it depends on the situation/scene/props, but I guess some basic stuff I've read would be something like keep joints bent, diagonals>straight lines, keeping arms/legs asymmetrical... are these on the right track? Other suggestions?

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While browsing OMP it occurred to me that all the models seem to get rave reviews. And I guess you really can't do much about that because if you were to be blunt and honest (my specialty) you would get negative reviews as well. Is there any indication of their skill other than their small amount of carefully selected photos? Are there any questions I could ask to better gauge their skill/potential?

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I looked through my photos* and found that the model in question generally seemed ill-prepared (very poor choice of clothing, chipped nail polish, clashing jewlery). Which leads to the question of what is on your checklist for asking models to prepare/bring items?

*I have about 3 decent shots that I would post for critique, but I chose not to pay extra for a model release ($10, but principle) so I don't feel so comfortable posting them when combined with my comments above.

**Last edit, I'd like to reiterate that any issues I had was 90% due to my inexperience. I just think that by talking about and asking the last two questions, 90% will drop to maybe 85%