Tip for lighting 9 or 10 person group shot

dlscott56

Got some family coming and will be trying to get a group shot of us. It will be taken indoors. No door walls but a couple of narrow and tall windows. High ceiling. Not sure if the timing will be day or night.

I have 2 umbrellas, shoot through or reflective, and stands with speedlights, and one smaller (15" by 15") softbox with speedlight and stand. In addition to that I have one more speedlight. Using Cactus triggers. I've been spending lots of time learning to use all of this but never on groups.

There will be a large lighted Christmas tree in the room that seems like a good background if I could find a way to pose people in front of it.

My first thought was to pose them as shown below. The parents seated with 2 couples and one adult standing around behind them, 2 male adult grandchildren kneeling on either side of the parents, and, if she comes, the third female grandchild sitting on the floor in front of them. Lighting as shown but wasn't sure about the lighting setup. Or pose for that matter.



Tips on lighting, posing, and best way to capture the tree in the image are welcome and appreciated.

pathfinder

dlscott56 wrote:

Got some family coming and will be trying to get a group shot of us. It will be taken indoors. No door walls but a couple of narrow and tall windows. High ceiling. Not sure if the timing will be day or night.

I have 2 umbrellas, shoot through or reflective, and stands with speedlights, and one smaller (15" by 15") softbox with speedlight and stand. In addition to that I have one more speedlight. Using Cactus triggers. I've been spending lots of time learning to use all of this but never on groups.

There will be a large lighted Christmas tree in the room that seems like a good background if I could find a way to pose people in front of it.

My first thought was to pose them as shown below. The parents seated with 2 couples and one adult standing around behind them, 2 male adult grandchildren kneeling on either side of the parents, and, if she comes, the third female grandchild sitting on the floor in front of them. Lighting as shown but wasn't sure about the lighting setup. Or pose for that matter.



Tips on lighting, posing, and best way to capture the tree in the image are welcome and appreciated.

I would start by determining my basic ambient exposure for the tree and the Christmas lights. ISO and aperture needed. I would then set my strobes to create a field of lighting in front of the tree, but not shining onto it, that needs one stop smaller aperture. The goal being to expose the subjects correctly with a aperture of ~ f8, and have the background about 2/3s to 1 fstop under exposed with the same aperture. You may need flags to keep your strobe lights from hitting the background to do this, but with enough separation you may not. You will need your subjects to be at least 6-8 feet in front of your tree to accomplish this.

You could use your third light to create some rim light from off to one side behind your subjects as well.

Posing I will leave up to you.