Not a Wedding but a Group Shot. Needs some help.

anonymouscuban

I have a gig for 3 large group shots in 2 different locations. It's a group of very tenured employees... 15-20 years. The shots will be printed at 16x20, framed and mounted in the lobby of their 3 locations. They will also be using me, in the future, for their corporate head shots and some environmental portraits so I want this to turn out as well as possible.

Here is my issue. The only time they can get everyone together to shoot is at 2 PM. I tried to talk them into shooting later in the day but it won't happen. They want the shots taken in the front of the building. I scouted both locations yesterday, around 2 PM, and there is no shade. Below are shots of each spot taken with my phone.

I'm not a noob when it comes to shooting people but I wanted to see if you guys have any suggestions. I imagine full sun group shots happen a lot at weddings so thought you all would be best to ask.

Here is my plan:

• I will use 2 to 3 AB800 with 62" reflective umbrellas (PLM) as fill. I've shot AB800 this way before and they should do well to balance some of the light on the face.
  
• I plan on shooting up on a ladder so I'm shooting down on the group. Hoping I can avoid any heads being blocked but also hoping this will reduce some of the shadows from the brow and nose since they are looking up towards the light.
  
• I considered using a scrim but not sure about it. It's a large group so not sure how feasible it would be.

Any suggestions to improve the end product. Maybe I'm doing all I can already so some feedback as such would also be appreciated.

Or maybe you all can collectively pray for an overcast skies 2 days in a row. In southern California. In July. :cry

jonh68

In regards to using an umbrella I have given up using them outdoors. I don't have an assistant and they keep getting knocked over by the wind. I use a wagon with an attached light stand but still the umbrella gets blown in directions other than where I want it. If the wind is calm I still do not use umbrellas because I want a consistent look.

Now I am shooting barebulb. The light spreads out and the quality is between a softbox and beauty dish. It looks more like sunset light. With barebulb I keep the light just above head level. This makes a great catch-light, makes eyes pop, and reduces shadows.

You didn't mention how many are going to be in the shots. Looking at your photos if all of them can fit on the stairs that would be an option and you would have the building as part of the pic. The second pic would be tricky. That would be a case of just getting everyone on the porch and hopefully everyone in the shade or bring all of them out in the sun so you can at least have even light one them. Using a ladder would be a good idea and a tool to bring just in case.

Would there be an option of shade across the parking lot and use a telephoto for compression to get the building in the background?

anonymouscuban

John,

I will have an assistant but I do know the perils of shooting large modifiers outdoors. I don't anticipate any wind during this time of day and year. Hopefully I'm right.

The groups are large. The largest is 40 people, which would be in the bottom location. I doubt I can fit all of them so that they are all in the shade. So I will have to bring them all out into the sun. The last thing I need is half of them in shade and the other in the sun.

Unfortunately, there is zero shade other than what you see.

Sam

Alex,

Here are my thoughts:

First and foremost, what is their budget? Not looking for an actual number but rather a category. Budget, free, min wage and a thank you, or are they willing to look at the reality of the challenge they are putting before you?

Will they be happy with a stinky photo of all the employees (hopefully all show up) with squinting eyes and blown out portions of faces, or do they want a nice even exposure with every one clean crisp and recognizable?

Now as to thoughts: shooting from an elevated position is good. Can you get a tripod or other camera mount that high. Take images with various exposures of the scene without people. Now simply worry about exposing the people, ignore the background.

Perhaps large and costly but use a scrim, tent, etc.

Find a nice indoor location where you can control the light, shot great group shot. Extract the folks and put in a nice background that compliments the type of business they are in. The building fronts suck, (that's a technical term) This will satisfy all locations.

Shoot inside, create an entire staged set.

Call Annie Leibovitz.

Get sick and pass off the gig to some other unsuspecting soul.

With a reasonable budget and a client willing to put some effort and compromise on their side, very doable.

With a we are on a strict budget, will be there at 2:00 PM and you have 10 minutes, will only get crap images.

We only have this time slot and location but can provide as budget as needed. Doable.

I think I covered all the thoughts I have.

Sam

jonh68

Yep, 40 no way of getting all of them in the shade. I suspect this is going to be a case where they are going to realize after the fact that making it convenient for themselves is going to backfire.

This scenario I would use the 3 elevated levels in the sun, have about 4 or 5 rows of people, use a ladder, fire off the AB's and be done with it with a full disclaimer that they are picking the worst time of day to shoot and they would be much better earlier or later in the day.

puzzledpaul

// I considered using a scrim but not sure about it. It's a large group so not sure how feasible it would be. //

I have zero experience with group shots (other than family) but I wondered if this option is worth further investigation?

I've no idea what material is used / sold in the 'real world' for this task, but in the past I've used all manner of stuff (paper, tracing paper, tyvek, perspex etc) for controlling/ modifying light in macro situations in the back garden under similar lighting situations.

Whilst I accept there's a world of difference between introducing a 2ft square piece of material between sun and subject, compared with this job, I'd have thought that very difference offers potential for further discussion?

Ie you give them a quote which includes build / use / breakdown / hire etc of a suitable sized frame + material.

If they look, wince but accept ... go ahead and use one.
If they question ... that's your chance to really push home the difficulties of getting a decent shot under the conditions they've stipulated.

In your neck o' the woods, I'd have thought there are lots of companies / individuals doing this sort of work for the film industry ... and if you prove to current client that you can 'produce the goods' under such situations, then surely that'd set you apart from other snappers who aren't prepared to go to such lengths /trouble?

For a group of 40 I'd have thought it possible to construct a single span structure, so there'd be no intermediate supports?

I'd have thought it's one of those situations for making lemonade when it's raining lemons?

At least your subjects are (sorta) predictable and not moving around ... as opposed to someone asking me to get a decent pic of a swan (say), taking off in mid day sun

pp

anonymouscuban

Thanks for the replies guys. So I made one HUGE mistake with this job. I quoted them a price before scouting the location because I was told that both had large open shaded areas. I guess they were referring to the area directly underneath the front entry.

That said, the price I quoted leaves me $1800 after I deduct hard costs and assistant rate. I'm going to call a couple of local grip rental places to see what they recommend and how much it costs for a 2 day rental. I'm also going to call the gal coordinating this and see if there is an area inside that we can use. They're large food packing and distribution facilities so I'm really hoping there is space some where indoors. We shall see.

I will post a follow up once I explore those options.

anonymouscuban

OK... so I made some calls.

Indoors is not an option. There is a slight chance to move the shoot time to early in the day but it slims. The employees being photographed are in different shifts and 2 PM is the only time the shifts cross so that they don't have to pay people to come back. I understand that.

I called a couple local grip rentals and they recommended a 20'x20' butterfly overhead frame with silk. Day rate is roughly $100. I need it for 2 days so $200. Not terrible. I'm going to see if I can get them to cover it. If not, I will probably pay for it from my profit. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, this may lead to more work so I want to make sure I do my best. Regardless, I always strive to produce the best product I can. And to be honest, I'm kind digging the idea of shooting this using this new setup.

Again, will post follow up once I iron things out.

puzzledpaul

Sizes quoted are interesting, because I'd been wondering about 20ft (for the width, anyway)... based on the fact I used to have some 20ft alu scaffolding tubes and either a 10 x 4 or 8 x 5 group arrangement ...

A pullback would certainly be of interest to me - and probably others too.

pp

anonymouscuban

puzzledpaul wrote: »

Sizes quoted are interesting, because I'd been wondering about 20ft (for the width, anyway)... based on the fact I used to have some 20ft alu scaffolding tubes and either a 10 x 4 or 8 x 5 group arrangement ...

A pullback would certainly be of interest to me - and probably others too.

pp

Paul,

I will definitely be taking some pullback shots and sharing if I use the scrim. I'm kind of getting excited about this shoot. Definitely a challenge. Much more than I originally anticipated. When I first was approached with this job, I thought the hardest part would be wrangling everyone up during the shoot and maybe having to composite a few faces in for people blinking.

BTW, this is what I'm looking at using. A setup like this one but I think this is 12x12:

Sam

While 20X20 sounds large I think it could be a squeeze for 40 people.

Here's hoping sun, angle, tripod foot locations, (Terran, steps, obstacles) personnel space requirements, etc all line up.

Sam

puzzledpaul

Sam wrote: »

While 20X20 sounds large I think it could be a squeeze for 40 people.

Here's hoping sun, angle, tripod foot locations, (Terran, steps, obstacles) personnel space requirements, etc all line up.

Sam

Well, 10 sq ft would give me plenty of 'airspace' ... but then again, I don't fit into the 'plus size' (as people forum members refer to certain body shapes) category.

Otoh, most group shots I see tend to have more people L > R, than front to back, so a 10 x 4 could be more challenging ... especially if some are ... as Billy Connolly once remarked, 'No stranger to a fish supper'

Together with Sam, I hope the planets all line up if you decide to go this route.

Incidentally, I'd expected a rig with more than 2 supports ... interesting loading on the 'angle adjuster' pivots on the pole tops ... in wind gusts.

pp

ziggy53

Scrims can work, but overpowering the ambient light can yield a better direction to the light as well as more compositional opportunities (no worries about the scrim supports):

Rob Galbraith and 3 - 64" Silver PLM umbrellas lit by 3 - AlienBees B1600 640ws monolights:

Before any additional lighting:


Final photo with the flash and PLMs:


Pullbacks:

anonymouscuban

Ziggy,

Really appreciate the post. That's pretty much the setup I had initially considered and it makes me feel so much better to see those results they got. The only concern I have is he's using AB1600. I only have AB800s. Although, my group is much smaller and the lights can be positioned much closer than in that setup. I've shot portraits with my setup outdoors, many times in the past, and have gotten great results. The size of the groups I will be shooting is what had me worried. I should be good.

If I get the same results as this example you gave, my client will be extremely happy.

Stay tuned guys!!!

jonh68

I would appreciate updates on this one. I think it will be a good learning tool at least for me if I get family reunion requests and have to shoot in less than optimal settings.

bmoreshooter

I think that Ziggy's example and what you are trying to do may apples and oranges. The sun in his example is behind the subjects so all he has to do is light them from the front and ignore the back light. In your situation all of the light will be coming from the front and you will need to reduce the light to prevent blow out. The scrims are a great idea but you may need a couple of them. When using a ladder be sure that the camera is still perpendicular to the subjects. Don't get so high that you are pointing down or you may have some focusing issues.

anonymouscuban

Hmm... I'm gonna disagree with you a bit. They're side-lit by the sun but you can see that the sun is still quite high in the sky. That said, although the locations I'm shooting face North and South, the sun's position will be slightly higher than in the football player photo. This will cast slightly different shadows.

However... there should be no reason why I can't expose properly for both the sun and my strobes without the use of scrims. That is, provided my strobes can fill within 1 or 2 stops of the sunlight. Shooting when the sun is high is objectionable only because of the shadows cast on the face... the dark eyes, nose, etc. My strobes should fill these shadows, no problem, with the highlights from the sun exposed correctly.

And... as you can see in this dude's photo, his strobes matched, if not, overpowered the ambient/sun light. If they didn't, the background would have been blown out and it's not.

Foques

Well, now I officially want to shadow Ziggy..

aktse

Joe did it with small flashes too.

ziggy53

aktse wrote: »

Joe did it with small flashes too.

Joe McNally's image of NYFD Ladder 6, Engine 9, was shot in ambient light of EV 12 (open shade). Much of Alex's image will be at EV 15, or 8 times as much ambient light (bright and direct sunlight).

Rob Galbrath's image was shot at "1/320 at f/9 at ISO 100", or approximately EV 14-15-ish.

anonymouscuban

I'm gonna run some test shots this weekend. Will setup in my back yard, at the same time of day I'll be shooting, face the same direction as the location. I want to test to make sure that my AB800 have enough power at the apertures I will need to expose for ambient AND maintain within max synch speed.

ziggy53

anonymouscuban wrote: »

I'm gonna run some test shots this weekend. Will setup in my back yard, at the same time of day I'll be shooting, face the same direction as the location. I want to test to make sure that my AB800 have enough power at the apertures I will need to expose for ambient AND maintain within max synch speed.

Absolutely the best way to know for sure. The mark of professional thinking!

anonymouscuban

OK all. Did some testing today using just my strobes to overpower the sun. Thought I'd share my results.

So to recap what I'm trying to do... Need to take some group photos at 2 PM with one group facing directly North and the other location, the group facing exactly Southwest. This will most likely be in full sun. Although, we had a huge storm roll through yesterday and scatter clouds are supposed last all week. In July in Southern California, this is really rare. Of course, it happens right in the middle of me waxing my car but if this hangs around, till Wed and Thur, I'm not complaining at all.

I setup my test in part of my backyard, facing southwest. I decided to do this direction since it's the worse of the two as far as sunlight on the subject. I figure, if I can get results that I like in this location, facing north will be even better. As far as lighting, I setup my AB800 at full power, with a 64" soft-silver PLM. No diffuser on the PLM. I set it about 8 paces from my wife, the test subject.

So here is a shot with ONLY sunlight/ambient. I metered her face at 1/250 @ f/8, ISO 100, which is the setting I used in camera. As you can see, very unacceptable results. Shadows on the face are terrible. However, the background is well exposed.



So here is the same shot, same camera settings but with the AB800 firing. Much, much better. Meter reading from the flash on her face was f/9 at 1/250 so I have a little bit of wiggle room should I have to move the strobe back further. Also, this was with one AB800/PLM. I plan to use at least 2 of them to even light the group. Unfortunately, I don't have a 3rd AB800 but I do have some AB400s I can try to use just to add a bit more light.



By the way, these were both lowest res JPG shots from camera. Its what was synched using my EyeFi card. I plan on shooting RAW so I will have a bit more DR to work with if needed.

Now, the only thing I'm not liking is that people will probably be squinting but there isn't a whole lot I can do about that. Also, I wish I could use a slightly shallower DOF but I'm willing to sacrifice that. Besides, I don't want to have to worry about hyperfocal distances and stuff with a group of 40 people.

I should mention that while we were out there, an occasional cloud would move in front of the sun. I took some meter readings. With the cloud cover, f/5.6. That's a huge difference. If I get lucky and have some clouds, I could get away with shooting at f/5.6 but I may run into people being out of focus.

Feel much better about this gig now. I know now that I can deliver results that the client will love.

Love to hear what you all think.

ziggy53

I suspect that the customer will be pleased to have similar results. Good job, Alex. clap

anonymouscuban

Thought I'd share one more shot from my test. This is a shot I took when a small cloud covered the sun. Everything else remained constant with the other two shots above. You can see that the background is just a bit darker. I could stand to slow the shutter speed a bit to bring the exposure on the ambient up without have any impact on the flash exposure. But you can see that with just a bit of cloud cover, how much more pleasing the ambient light. Again, these are low res JPG straight out of camera.

cmason

You seem to be getting an odd, furry yellow shadow every time your flash fires...thats a real unusual artifact

anonymouscuban

cmason wrote: »

You seem to be getting an odd, furry yellow shadow every time your flash fires...thats a real unusual artifact

HAHA... yeah. At first I thought it was dust blob on my sensor but I cleaned it and it's still there. And it moves around the frame so it can't be sensor dust!

By the way guys... shot the first 2 groups at the first location yesterday. Had nice, puffy clouds all morning. Then 15 minutes before I started shooting, they moved on by and was stuck shooting in full sun. UGH! Good thing I prepared for the worst!!

Although I have yet to load them and look on the computer, I had my camera syncing to my iPad and the low res file it gets looked pretty good. The RAW from my D800 should look even better. Add a little post work and they should look great all things considered.

One other note... they do this every 2-3 years. They had the photos from the last time hung in their lobby. Let me just say that the last photographer they hired set the bar really low. He shot with no light modifiers, just the harsh sunlight. I can't see the client not loving the photos. :ivar

Qarik

well??

anonymouscuban

I still have to process the shots. I will post them up. That said....

I did the best I could but personally, I'm not happy with the results. I was syncing to my iPad while shooting and I shared the photos with the person in charge of the project. They were happy. But again, I wasn't. Let's just say these won't be displayed on website or with my watermark.

The location as a backdrop sucked. The amount of time we had to get the people 30-40 people corralled and posed was very rushed. The first location, it was about 95 degrees in full sun make people very uncomfortable and this made it even harder to get people to cooperate.

Definitely a learning experience. Not sure what I learned but it was an experience.

jonh68

While this may not be a showcase picture some clients value being able to deliver in a short amount of time and realize what you went through to get the shots. I call it triage photography. You have to do the best you can with limited time and bad conditions. This is when professionalism shines through.

Foques

/grabs popcorn