Possibly in over my head?

I have been "volunteered" to assist a local school by photographing its students lying on the ground in the form of the letters of the alphabet. The photos will be combined on a poster of the "ABCs" and auctioned off at a school benefit.

I got into the school gym today and took some test shots today and the results were less than good.

First off, I am pretty much a novice. I've had my DSLR for a bit over a year and I've never done something like this.

First, what I was planning to do: Get up on a ladder that is up on the stage in the gymnasium and shoot downward at the kids laying on the ground (hardwood of the basketball court). The kids would be laying on a white sheet and would be dressed in black pants and shirts. Each letter would be composed of about 3-5 kids.

By way of lighting, I have some halogen lamps that I shield with white umbrellas and I have a canon 420 flash on the XTi. I am planning to shoot with the Tamron 17-50 but might pull out the 85 1.8 - its maybe a bit long and I would need to get up a bit higher which might not be possible.

In any event, on today's test shots, the white sheet just plain looked bad and crumpled. At present, I think my best option is to overexpose the sheet but that "feels" wrong. I also could spend a ton of time in photoshop editing the elements but, obviously, I'd prefer to spend that time in other pursuits. I really can't duplicate a light box the size of what is needed on the budget the school gave me ($80 for poster print and frame).

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Can you take it outside? The lighting in gyms is awful. I would take them to a classroom that has loads of windows or outside.

Do you have access to a football field? I'm not thinking the use of the field itself, but if you set them up at the base of the stands, on the backside, you would have the height you're looking for to use that 85mm....just a thought.

Good Luck!

We're definitely limited to being indoors, as it is pretty cold (about 2 degrees) here in Chicago and the kids are just in kindergarten!

What about the lunch room. that might have better lighting than the gym does. as far as the sheet you can tape down the corners. that should help with the renkels

instead of a sheet, maybe something like a white plastic that can be tacked down or taped down so the wrinkles are minimal. That or maybe a sheet of thin plywood painted white.

did u try to make it direclty on the gym's floor i think it would be ok.
don'tknow.. never been in this sitaution but this is how i would have thought

I'm now working on finding something different for the background. That's a good idea.

Yeah it sounds like your getting shadows from the wrinkles. Get some sheets 1/8 sheets of mdf and paint them white. You will get seams, but maybe some white tape could hide those. And MDF is cheap. Did you do A test with a kid on the floor. I wounder if this might be the sign of some bad shadow problems to come. You could also try another color background. Waves look art full in red satin

Check out Adorama for some large white seamless background paper.

I would probably use the 50 1.8 and shoot it at 5.6. If you shoot in the gym youre in lighting hell. the color temp is going to be weird and uneven. Find a another location if you can. Shoot RAW so you can fix it. It sounds like you're shooting 26 images or is it one image of 140 kids?

What you really want is a chroma-key backdrop like a "green screen" and you can composite a background in photoshop. Also a tilt/shift lens would be helpful as well... but with an $80 budget I don't see a TS lens in there. You could do the back drop on the cheap though.

The picture will e a composite of 26 images instead of one, so luckily, I can create a smaller space. I've done some test shots and was using the Tamron. I will probably try the 50 1.8, but I find it hunts more than the Tamron and is out of focus more often than the Tamron. I suspect this would be a good excuse to add a 50 1.4!

Do you have a picture to show us what you got in your samples? Might help us with suggestions.

I have done this a couple of times, the first one I was inside and spelled out the words LOVE and JOY. I shot each letter individually and then used PS to spell the words. I think this is the best way to go as you can get each letter closer to your lights and don't need to worry about such a large background area. The second time I did it was an outdoor shoot and I had the help of the local fire department. I was able to get about 70 feet above the kids and shoot down. This time we spelled out the COLLINS 100 as it was the elementary's 100 year anniversary. Again, each letter shot individually and then joined in PS.

Good luck, should be a lot of fun.

Tim

heh.. this is why photographers are in business.