Help - Group Photos

[mergino]

Has anybody any links to sites giving ideas for arranging group photos e.g. family of 5, extended family etc.

What aperture do you normally set for group photos? I find that some of mine (20D) haven't been as sharp as I would like.

Any help/hints appreciated...

[SuzanneCarey]

Hi Mergino! I am glad to see another post on this subject as I posted a thread myself. But, I got VERY FEW responses. ( It was suggested to me to post it in a different forum, but I thought this one was appropriate but that may not be the case)I will watch this one to see if you get anymore. I have also gotten very soft group shots even at 1/13 with tripod and cable release. Not happy with them so trying to learn to see if I am doing something wrong. Thanks for the post! I will be watching. :)

[Curtis N]

mergino, Suzanne,

Sorry no one smarter than me has offered anything here.

For posing ideas, you might try books on portraiture, or possibly visiting photographers' web sites and looking around.

As far as aperture is concerned, I assume you're trying to get enough depth of field to keep everyone in focus. Using your camera's A-DEP mode might help, but be sure all of the focus points are hitting your subjects. Recomposing (but not zooming) to accomplish this might work. Note the aperture the camera selects and then switch to Av mode and set your aperture. The depth of field preview button also might help. If you know your approximate subject distance and lens, there are a number of online depth of field calculators that you can play around with.

Lighting can be another challenge, with subjects casting shadows on each other. If you use flash, closer subjects will be brighter than the ones standing behind them.

I think I've given you more problems than solutions. I hope some of the wedding photogs will jump in. Here is one of very few group portraits I have shot.

[cricket]

As far as posing groups of people, first decide the formality of the portrait. Some poses are very formal, some very casual. Pretty obvious. This is usually decided by the occasion and/or the client's wishes.

At weddings, I use what is available to pose people on to get some varied heights and interest. In the church, if at the altar, I will use stairs, if there are any, and sometimes pull in some chairs from another room if it's a larger group or I don't want to get the entire bodies. Or, I'll take them outside and use logs to sit on, the grass to sit on, a small hill, or just stand them in a way that they don't look like they're in line for the firing squad!

Portraits obviously offer us more choices, as there isn't as much as a rush, and you can choose from a much wider variety of backgrounds/scenes. In a group of only 5 to 10 people, you can pose them with 1-2 rows, keeping in mind your DOF.

It's one of those things where there are many opinions on where to put one person's head compared to another's, how should the hands be, all that. My own style is a little loose, I'm not into the ultra formal look. I like to get the people's heads on different levels, not too structured. If no two heads are at the same level, I'm happy. You won't always see what they're sitting on, so use the phone book if you have to to get a head a little higher.

When they're sitting on the ground I like to have the ladies legs off to one side, usually leading out of the composition. I am a little old fashioned in that I like Dad's or Grandpa's head to be the highest, usually. I do like the boys to kneel in a football pose, or sit with their bum on the ground and one knee bent and the other leg folded under, with a hand on the bent knee, usually. Babies are usually in a lap, dogs held by one of the older kids or an adult. Just those sort of things I tend to do.

As for my exposure, I find f5.6 to f8 to do the trick. Outdoors I like to use 5.6, I like the look with the background not being so sharp. But if there are more rows of folks, I go for f8, rarely f11 or higher (but this is a loose rule for me, as a very bright background might need a smaller aperture and I may want to match my flash output with that reading). I just set my flash/camera to what I want. The shutter speed I'll set according to how bright the ambient light is, and how bright I want the background to be. In a dark church or dark green trees/foliage, I slow the shutter way down, and in bright sunny backgrounds I speed it up and set the f-stop/flash out put to match as I said above.

Also, indoors with incandesent light, make sure your lights are brighter than those yellow lights! It sure makes skin look bad to have that yellow cast! And as for the shadows from other heads, try to be up a little higher, or have the lights a bit higher angled down a bit so shadows fall down. That is definitely not a fun thing to retouch! Umbrellas help a lot with that, too. Not the retouching, the shadow thing!

It's late, and I'm getting tired. I really hope this makes some sense to you. In my head it does!

I've attached a family photo I shot on film that I happened to have a JPEG of. It was done on 100 speed film, f8, 1/125th (because the baby and mom moved around a bit). It is not a stellar example of my work, but shows how I pose a family in a very small room with chairs and so on. The other photo is in a front yard, and I don't remember the exposure right now, sorry.

I'm glad you asked this question. I still find myself scratching my head when a challenging situation comes up. I just dive in and start putting folks in the scene, and step back, take a look, move someone, ask someone to lean this way, etc. Don't be afraid to get a group posed and then change things to your liking. That, to me, shows you care that it looks good.

[Curtis N]

Thanks, Cricket!
Lots of good advice there.

[mergino]

Thanks for that.
Any recommended books or website links?

[MTalley]

I had run across a spot somewhere on the web. If I find the link, I'll post it.

The camera settings suggested earlier should do the trick. Around f/5.6 to f/8.0 should get your group all in focus, while still blurring the background somewhat. Try using multiple focus points, or if using a single focus point, pick someone mid-pack to focus on.

The general rule of thumb is to alter the heights of everyone's heads and put their bodies in different positions front-to-back relative to the camera. All of the above examples illustrate this nicely. If you just line everyone up in a straight line, the photo will look somewhat flat, or snapshot-like.

Alternate tall and short people, use chairs for a few, if needed. The larger family photo, above, is an excellent example. For a more casual setting, the one below works well.

In the choir photo, I would've suggested moving everyone in the middle row over 1/2 a person, so that their faces appeared between the ones in the first row. You lose some chins in that particular arrangement.

[Airedale1]

Have you considered posting your query in the "Talk About Photography" section of this forum? It is for, "General discussion about techniques, tips, tricks and how to make your photos better, shooting more fun and productive."