Remember my previous post? I talked about portrait photography for MBS but also mentioned we photographed a the whole team as a group inside the house in which we photographed the individual portraits. Well, I didn’t include the making of the group photographt in the previous post as I wanted to keep it for a seperate post.
The group photograph we took of the staff at MBS was done in a living room. They had seen a group photograph of a father and his 4 sons I did a while ago and they wanted something along those lines for their formal group photograph. Therefore, we set up a mobile studio containing a background system with white background paper and 3 Elinchrome strobes (RX600). I used 1 large Chimera softbox on the strobe facing the group and two gridded strobes aimed at the background in order to illuminate the white background (as to render it as white as possible without blowing it out too much). The grids I used in order to reduce the spill on to the people in the group, coming strait out of the strobes. This is something I wouldn’t need to do in studio, but on location, where space comes at a premium, this was necessary.
You can see part of the setup in this image, which I took as part of my test images to judge the lighting and position of the people in the group.
group photograph
Notice also the white curtain I had to use in order to get the group positioned against a white backdrop. As the group photograph was to be cleaned-up afterwards in post production, it didn’t bother me too much.
So this is what it finally looked like. I positioned myself a bit higher up in order to create more depth in the image, which was liked very much by the group (and myself …). Image photographer on a Nikon D3x. Flashes triggered with Elinchrome Skyport.
group photograph
Group photographs are sometimes a nightmare for photographers, as there are so many things that can go wrong …. but on this one, it was almost plain sailing!
