Large team portrait

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posiph

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Amber Waldron
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Hello! I'm interested in knowing how any of you would take a team portrait of 150 people. I will be taking one in a couple of months. This will be the largest one I've done. The team will be grouped in an atrium, standing close together and I will be up high on a balcony overlooking the group. There is not enough ambient to light the group (in a pleasing way), so I'll be using flash. Without knowing my own level of experience, light source and power and type of camera and lens I have, I was curious to know, how would you personally light such a group? Anyone out there with experience in this scenario? Many thanks!
 
Controlling lighting for that amount of people isn't easy, in the past I did shoot quite a few large groups but not in an Atrium from high above. I would set the group in 3 or 4 rows behind each other on tiered platforms. I used up to 4 mains powered flash units through white umbrellas (from just above the middle row's head height) and a flash meter. While setting up I would go to each section of where the group was going to be and set the flash exposure to balance the whole frontage (before they arrived) then the seating/standing arrangements would be the next issue trying to ensure everyone's faces were visible, my own shooting position would be level with the middle row. Exposure was determined by the amount of DoF required (on MF Film) for front to back sharpness and it was all done on film (pre-digital) so I would take several shots in the hope that one of them had everyone's eyes open and looking at the camera.

TBH it is a very stressful gig that I would not accept these days so I wish you luck Amber. Hope this helps.
 
Evenly lighting a large group of people isn't easy. How many flash guns do you have? How powerful and what sort of modifiers do you have.

My lighting background started in theatres where you have stage lights. The initial method would be to set multiple lights and then have someone walk around the area whilst someone is looking for dark patches and brighter areas and then adjusting those, and then once a basic even light has been achieved, you can think about adding other scenes, colours and special effects.

One thing about theatre lighting is that you are not necessarily after realism, but you want even coverage for a baseline, and once you have that you can play with intensities to suit the particular scene.
 
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Cor, tricky. Never done exactly that but .. if it didn't have a glass roof I'd use a 1200Ws strobe in a 45 degree reflector at full power, bounced off the ceiling.

Instead I'd use a huge (3m x 6m) silk in front of the crowd & push as much light through as I could manage, probably using silver brollies on the strobes. If shooting through isn't an option then I'd bounce light off it. I might try to put the light to one side, might not.

Failing all of those I'd rent the best performance high ISO camera I could get my mitts on and shoot with ambient.

Do tell us - how are you planning to do it?
 
One of the first questions that I'd ask (which hasn't been addressed yet) is what is the room/atrium like?

You can easily (and evenly) light a group of that size if you have a decent sized room with white (ish) walls by directing a couple of 600Ws flashes at the walls and bouncing
the light back in to the room.

Failing that, I'd have two 600Ws' up on the balcony, bare bulbed, pointing down at the crowd, aiming about 2/3rds into the group to spread the fall off.

The honest answer though is without seeing the room/set-up, no one is going to be able to give you n accurate answer.
 
Thank you everyone for your responses. I'm glad I'm not alone in understanding the trickiness of the situation. There will be no walls to bounce lights off of and the ceiling is too high to do any good even from the balcony. I have 2 1250 powerlights and I'm using a 70D canon so not the best there I understand. I was thinking of using my 28-70 canon lens. I was thinking of bouncing the powerlights into 2 large umbrellas. I also have 2 godox 300 pro lights which I could also put toward the back of the group perhaps?. I'll definitely be taking some test shots in some wide spaces but it's kind of hard to round up 150 people willing to help you take a test shot!! I did show my contact from the company a similiar shot taken from up high and looking down so I know they are fine with that set up and not looking for something really formal, thank goodness!
 
Topsy said:
Controlling lighting for that amount of people isn't easy, in the past I did shoot quite a few large groups but not in an Atrium from high above. I would set the group in 3 or 4 rows behind each other on tiered platforms. I used up to 4 mains powered flash units through white umbrellas (from just above the middle row's head height) and a flash meter. While setting up I would go to each section of where the group was going to be and set the flash exposure to balance the whole frontage (before they arrived) then the seating/standing arrangements would be the next issue trying to ensure everyone's faces were visible, my own shooting position would be level with the middle row. Exposure was determined by the amount of DoF required (on MF Film) for front to back sharpness and it was all done on film (pre-digital) so I would take several shots in the hope that one of them had everyone's eyes open and looking at the camera.

TBH it is a very stressful gig that I would not accept these days so I wish you luck Amber. Hope this helps.
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After looking at your beautiful and serene/peaceful work I can see why you would steer clear of this kind of job these days!
 
Hey everyone! I just wanted to follow up on this project. Thank you to everyone for your input! I ended up doing an impromptu shot for 180 people that the company asked for at the last minute right after I arrived at the hotel so they were happy to get whatever I could provide. It was decided to photograph this group right after they came out of thier sales conference meeting at the end of the day in the atrium of the hotel. The outlets were not working we found out so with no time no time to spare I took the escaltor to the fourth floor and everyone gathered into a fixed space right below me. I had a 28-55 on my camera and set the ISO to 3200 at f8 and took several shots focusing about one third of the way into the group. In photoshop I played with the exposure, highlights and shadows, the whites and blacks etc and was able to produce a usable image. The next day for both the group of 50 and the group of 100 I set up my lights as follows.....the 2 photogenic 1250 power lights were placed each on either side toward the front high as they would go and pointed to their opposite sides. Next to each of those lights were my 2 godox 300 lights set to full power to fill in at the back of the group. All four lights were bounced out of large umbrellas. I metered f8 through most of the space except the outskirts remained almost a full stop more and the very center almost a full stop under....over 5.6. Camera settings were ISO 400, F8 at 6.3 at a 60th for the ambient fill. Again, lowering contrast and highlights and playing with brightening and exposure, usable images were produced. Images taken from the third floor. A megaphone came in handy! The first image and last image are finished and the middle two showing the set up and raw image Critiques welcome.
 

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posiph said:
Hey everyone! I just wanted to follow up on this project. Thank you to everyone for your input! I ended up doing an impromptu shot for 180 people that the company asked for at the last minute right after I arrived at the hotel so they were happy to get whatever I could provide. It was decided to photograph this group right after they came out of thier sales conference meeting at the end of the day in the atrium of the hotel. The outlets were not working we found out so with no time no time to spare I took the escaltor to the fourth floor and everyone gathered into a fixed space right below me. I had a 28-55 on my camera and set the ISO to 3200 at f8 and took several shots focusing about one third of the way into the group. In photoshop I played with the exposure, highlights and shadows, the whites and blacks etc and was able to produce a usable image. The next day for both the group of 50 and the group of 100 I set up my lights as follows.....the 2 photogenic 1250 power lights were placed each on either side toward the front high as they would go and pointed to their opposite sides. Next to each of those lights were my 2 godox 300 lights set to full power to fill in at the back of the group. All four lights were bounced out of large umbrellas. I metered f8 through most of the space except the outskirts remained almost a full stop more and the very center almost a full stop under....over 5.6. Camera settings were ISO 400, F8 at 6.3 at a 60th for the ambient fill. Again, lowering contrast and highlights and playing with brightening and exposure, usable images were produced. Images taken from the third floor. A megaphone came in handy! The first image and last image are finished and the middle two showing the set up and raw image Critiques welcome.
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Something I discovered is with group shots, I have better luck cropping them to 8x16 or 1x2. Not cluttered that way. Got people on the edge of the picture ready to fall off. Only thing I'd havs a use for something like an 8x10 for anymore is a portraite and I don't do those.
 
Don Fischer said:
Something I discovered is with group shots, I have better luck cropping them to 8x16 or 1x2. Not cluttered that way. Got people on the edge of the picture ready to fall off. Only thing I'd havs a use for something like an 8x10 for anymore is a portraite and I don't do those.
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I suspect that you need to view the images at full size rather than critique the thumbnails.
 
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