Got a gig booked for two weekends from now, photographing a large family portrait. We’re planning on about 25 people, all meeting at the home of the parents, where we’re going to squeeze them all into a room and make them smile like they want to be there.
The goal is to get in, setup, and be ready and waiting by the time they’re all there so we can get them into position, arranged by families within the group, and shoot the thing before anyone starts to burn out. Then we can disperse them to relax and do smaller family shots, without the tension of keeping everybody “on deck.”
The last time they had a group shot done, they all wore black and white, shot against a white wall, and processed the prints as B&W. It’s a look that they like, so we’re recreating it this time. The background will be a large off-white wall in the house, which I’ll blast to white and adjust in post.
Lighting will be in the form of a pair of Speedlites with shoot-through umbrellas, high up on the stands and shooting across the group, one from each side, with some feathering. To keep everyone sharp, I’m going to need a small f-stop, f/8 or f/11, although the properties of a wide-angle lens will help maintain DOF. The trick is to light everyone nicely, without head shadows, so between the umbrellas and the aperture, I’ll need to push out a lot of light – I wouldn’t be surprised if the Speedlites fire at half or even full power.
I’ll be using the 7D and shooting RAW, but I’ll have the Picture Style set to monochrome; it won’t affect the RAW file at all, but the preview image is always a JPEG, and will display in B&W with that setting, which will let me get an idea how the final photo will look after conversion. Since we’re working in a confined space I’ll be using the 17-40mm L.
In a perfect world I’d be able to get a third Speedlite in behind the group, to both kick up the white wall and add some separation between it and the group. I doubt I’ll have enough room for that here, so what I may do instead is put it camera-center on the boom stand and crank it down from overhead as a fill/booster.
Anytime that you’re working in a fixed space with a large group, you end up with two primary variables. The first is, of course, the people – if you’ve got a good crowd that’s having fun with the process, your life is easy. Happy people make good photos, whereas a group of people who’d rather not be there will look that way. The second variable is the room; even when they tell you it will be a fairly open space, you can count on having to move photos off the walls, furniture out of the way, and distracting knick-knacks from the mantle. It’s Murphy’s Law that there will always be a sofa in the exact spot you need to place a lightstand, so the trick is to come prepared – Justin Clamps, booms, and when all else fails, Voice-Activated Lightstands (also known as assistants).
In theory, this should be a straight-forward gig. Hopefully reality plays out that way!
