Group portraits can be lot of fun and make you quite a bit of money if you know what
you're doing.
So here's some tips.
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Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
Today on The Slanted Lens, we're gonna talk about how to do a corporate group portrait
or a team photo.
This is a formal portrait.
This is people standing shoulder to shoulder, looking at the camera, getting their group
shot to show all the people who work at this certain business.
Now I do these for a company that I work for up in Northern California.
I love doing them.
They're a lot of fun.
I'm gonna talk about how we set it up, how we lit it, and just a few tips and things
that people ought to bring.
So let's get started and see what we can do.
Number one for me and for the company is shoot these early in the morning.
It's just easier.
Everyone comes into the business, they get there slightly before they would normally
start their workday, you're gonna get your photograph done, and then send them on their
way.
If you try to do these in the afternoon...and I've tried that before...it's just difficult.
People don't show up, they show up late, they're at other sites.
It just doesn't work very well.
Number two, set up before they arrive.
This kind of depends on the time of year and the business you're working with, but in this
case, I'm gonna get there super-early, like at 5 or 5:30.
We're gonna shoot at 7:00 because the sun is just coming up then and I've got a little
bit of ambient light.
I don't want them to ever stand around and wait.
I want the minute they arrive, that I start getting them into their place and they're
always working to get ready and they feel like this process is always moving down the
tracks and it's not stalled or waiting at any time.
One of the reasons I want this to happen so quickly when they arrive is that I don't want
to take away from company billing time any more than I have to.
I want the company to feel like I respect the fact that these people all need to go
to work and I'm there to do my job, do it quickly, and get them back on the job.
Choose the background.
The first thing I do when I arrive is I choose my background.
And this kind of goes with the next point and that is get rid of the sun.
I want to choose my background so that I'm looking and I've got the sun either off to
my right or left, right or left, in the background and coming up towards me.
I don't want it over my shoulder because it's gonna start to light my people and cause problems
for me.
I don't want it to come in hard from the side because it'll do the same thing.
I want it on my far right or far left so it's kind of away from what I'm doing.
It's not gonna light them in the front.
It's gonna throw them into shadow and then I can light them with my strobes.
In choosing that background, so I've got to consider that, I've got to make sure the sun
is gonna be in the right place.
I put trucks in there, they have their logos on it.
That gives me a nice background, little bit of trees in the back behind that, and then
the sun's gonna come up on my left or on my right and I'm ready to go.
That's kind of my standard formula for getting the shot organized first thing in the morning
in the dark and off we go.
Side note on that.
It's always nice to look at the location the day before and just see exactly what it's
gonna look like.
Light changes at different times of the year and you wanna see exactly what you're gonna
be in for.
Looking at the light at the location a day before is always a good idea.
Not always possible, but a great idea.
I normally use a Baja for this type of shoot so I don't have to worry about power.
I can just put them up and turn them on and off we go.
But I had sent the Bajas with Andy to a second unit shoot.
He was shooting another group the same morning.
So I'm gonna use the packet head system.
I've got 2 heads, 1 800-watt second pack, and I'm gonna plug those 2 heads into the
same pack, which is gonna give me about 400 watt seconds for each head.
So I've got my lights up, one on each side.
Now I'm going to take a meter reading.
But I know with these strobes on this pack at full power, that's 400 watt seconds each
at about that distance, I'm gonna get roughly about F8.
That's where I would start.
So I usually just put on F8 and take a shot.
That's usually what I do.
But I'm gonna say I take a meter reading because that would be a really photographic intelligent
thing to do.
So I'm going to set my aperture at F8.
I want the aperture on my camera to match the output of the strobes.
That's what you always do.
Match your aperture to the output of the strobes.
That's gonna be F8.
I'll now set the shutter at 1/80th of a second.
It's in the dark.
I'm not gonna see any ambient light here whatsoever.
So there's my first exposure.
So that background is really dark so I'm gonna lengthen my shutter to 1/15th of a second
and I'm gonna take another exposure.
So I'm going to keep shortening the shutter as the ambient gets brighter and brighter
so I always have a correct exposure on my people.
Any time you're shooting out on location, that is always the challenge.
Strobes on location equal having to control strobes with the aperture and the ambient
with the shutter.
That sky looks a lot better now, but Kenneth is just a little bright so I'm gonna change
my aperture to F10.
That's gonna bring Kenneth into the right exposure and I'm gonna have a nice background.
It's still a little dark in the background, but I know my sun's coming up.
It's just gonna get brighter and brighter, so I'm gonna wait for a few minutes and just
watch that start to happen, then I'm gonna chase that sun with my shutter speed.
The shutter doesn't have the ability to change the strobe light at all because it's too slow.
It's like the two are doing their own thing.
Strobes are lighting the people in the foreground and the shutter's aligned enough ambient to
bring up the background and light them to show some detail in the background.
So the ambient light can become bright enough that it starts to affect the light on people's
faces, but generally speaking, that's gonna take a long time to get that much ambient
light, so you're gonna be very safe using the shutter to control your ambient in the
background and your strobe power on the people in the foreground.
Those two together are gonna make a nice portrait.
So here's our final image of the group before any retouching is done.
It's a little dark, but we'll open it up in Photoshop.
Now let's talk a little bit about posing.
People need to be separated one from another.
You know, I've done this a lot of different ways, but my favorite thing to do, I simply
do what everyone knows: tall people in the back, shorter people in the front, and then
I bring a ladder.
If I get them lined up nicely so I have those two or three rows and I get up on a ladder,
I can slowly climb that ladder to where I see the separation from each row and then
I can start to do my pictures there.
That's one of the reasons I get my lights up so high is because I want it up high enough
to be able to light their faces, I'm gonna come up on the ladder and look down at everyone,
and they're gonna look up at me and that gives us a nice separation.
The only thing to watch out for is make sure your lights are not up too high, but high
enough that you're not throwing shadows off from one person's head onto the face of the
person behind them.
That's a difficult thing to balance, so take a look at that when you take your first picture.
That's something you've got to be very aware of.
Make sure they all come in the same uniform.
Some companies have three or four different uniforms, long sleeve, short sleeve, blue
shirt, white shirt.
Just make sure everyone comes in the same uniform that's put on a call sheet so they
can post that in the break room or wherever they're gonna be at so they can see exactly
what they're supposed to wear when they're supposed to be there.
It's always a good idea to ask management to bring a few extra uniforms so they can
match the look you're gonna have that day, so if someone shows up in the wrong uniform,
you've got a uniform for them right there.
Watch their hands.
When you have a group of people, when they put their hands in front of them like this,
it's, "I have to go to the bathroom."
When they take their hands and put them behind themselves, it's, "I have no arms."
Get them all to be the same, either drop to the side or in their pockets or one hand in
the pocket.
Just try to give some uniformity to the experience.
Now you may have a different view about that.
You may want to do it differently, but that's my experience.
"I've got to go to the bathroom," "I've got no arms."
More comfortable here at the side or in their pockets I think is a nice place.
One of the most important parts of this process is to be in charge.
They look to the photographer to take control and to be in charge of this experience.
Don't look to the management or to the boss [inaudible 00:07:02].
You be in charge.
You stand up there.
You get it organized.
A megaphone can help or if you really have a big group of people that can't hear you,
but the reality is you've got to be in charge.
You don't want to be mean, you don't want to be rude, but you want to have a sense of
authority that this has got to happen, it's got to happen in the time frame.
I always say to people, "Okay, everybody, let's move along.
We're all gonna freeze to death out here if we don't all get together, you know?
Everybody listen here."
And I always go, "Oh, oh, hey, everybody.
Right here, right here.
Oh."
I'll say, "I can't go ahead, I can't keep going if everyone's going to keep talking,"
you know, I'll let them know.
Don't to keep trying to take the photograph when people are talking.
My mother taught me that.
She's a schoolteacher.
She goes, "Don't ever try to teach school when kids are talking.
When a kid starts to talk, you stop.
And all the kids go...and then you go forward."
And you can do that very same thing with a group of people.
If they all are talking, you just stop and you look.
They all go..."Okay, I need everybody with me.
Let's move forward."
And once you get them back with you, you can move forward.
So it's always a hard thing to do and people are cold, they want to be done, they want
to be done with it, out of there, but you just got to get them with you and move ahead.
But be nice about it.
You don't want to be rude, because then your clients won't like you very much.
So there's some tips on how to shoot team photos or group photos.
You know, this is a great place to start your business, a great place to get work because
every company needs team photos, a way to introduce you to them and get that work at
that level and allow you to move up and do work for them in other areas.
Join our Facebook group.
We have a great group of people over there.
They're talking about all their images.
Post your team photos, talk about the challenges that you've faced when you've taken images
of big groups of people, how you've overcome them.
Show us some of the lighting you've used to overcome those issues.
We want to share, we want everyone to grow from that experience, so get over to the Facebook
group, The Slanted Lens Facebook group.
So keep those cameras rolling, keep on clicking.
And last one, two, three.
All right, thank you very much.
You know, after working in this business for 25-plus years, I really understand the things
that photographers and videographers face.
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facing.
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