Group shots are most photographers’ worst nightmare: blinkers, hard to find large uncluttered backgrounds, difficult to light, hard to be creative and the attention span of a group can only be measured in nanoseconds. So what do you do when one of your best client asks you to do a groups shot of 800 people in a dark conference room (think, 1/30th at f2.8 and iso 3200)?

Well, you just breath in and out a few times and then start thinking, scouting, testing and working with the client to find a solution. I know I’m a bit geeky about technique and light, but that’s because I also know that this basic knowledge will allow you to find a solution for just about every problem. And I strongly believe that a good picture can be made anywhere, anytime, if you just look hard enough.

Here is a quickly shot video about how we handled the shot above:

And here’s the YouTube version.

I used to be one of those many photographers who started sweating and trembling when they words “group” and “picture” were mentioned in the same phrase. But these days I actually like the challenge of it.

A big thanks to the client for the perfect cooperation and to Ake and Stijn to be perfect assistants.

Groupshots … I seem to have a love/hate relationship with them. There’s so much to think about and usually you don’t have the time to make something creative out of them. But I always enjoy the challenge. And this one was a particullary challenging one. It was done for one of my favorite corporate clients, the Flemish institute for Biotechnology. They needed a groupshot of their Board of Directors. Now, these people don’t meet very often, so there’s no chance for a rematch if you screw up. They added a new floor on top of their building and would have liked it to be included in some way in the picture. First plan was to shoot indoors on the new floor but it became clear very soon that it wouldn’t work for a group this size. So we went outside.

For this kind of assignments I turn up an hour early or so. That way I can scout, setup and test before I get the subjects in front of the camera. There are many good reasons for this way of working:
- These people have more important things to do.
- Time is money. It’s way cheaper to pay me for an extra hour of preparation than to pay 15 people for catching a cold
- Keeping a group focused for longer than 5 minutes is nearly impossible.
- It was freezing cold.

Toghether with the client we opted to use the building as a backdrop. A quick test shot got me in the balpark for a correct exposure.

With a shutter speed of half a second it’s clear that there will be blur from camera shake. I would use a tripod later but for this quick test shot, it’s enough that I can see the exposure of the background. Shooting a building at such a slow shutter speed isn’t difficult with a good tripod. These kind of buildings don’t move that much after all. Having 15 people to stand completely still for half a second is nearly impossible. So I needed to make sure there wasn’t any ambient light falling onto the subjects. After putting a sweater on a nearby lamp, I had a completely dark spot for them to stand. My hand served as a quick stand-in to test that out.

To make completely sure it was like I wanted it to be, I set the camera on a tripod and took a shot of myself (selftimer).

Now I had that right, I set up two speedlights, one on each side of the camera. Light falls off faster when your subject are closer to the lightsource. So to prevent only the people on the side being correctly exposed, I set the flashes rather far from the group. Let me explain: If you would put a flash one meter to the left of subject A and subject B would be one meter to the right of A, then the distance between B and the light source would be double (2 meters) than the distance between the light and A (1 meter). This means, way less light on subject B. Now if you put the light 10 meters from subject A, the distance between B and the light (11 meters) would be only 10% more than the distance between A and the light (10 meters). To make the differences even less, I placed the flashes at an angle of about 45 degrees from the camera and I ‘feathered’ the light. This means that I point the center of the light beam (brightest) towards the furthest subject in the group. This way the edge of the beam (less bright) strikes the nearest person. Not sure if this makes any sense, but it works.

You may have noticed that I have a light/flash meter hanging around my neck. I don’t use it very often, but in this kind of situation it can come in handy to take some readings along the place where the subjects would be standing. This allows me to check if the light is even across the width of the group.

I also noticed that one of the halogen lights, that are supposed to light the building (left of the frame), wasn’t working. So I got out another flash and placed it where the light was. I aimed the flash up and took a quick snap from the hip from where I was standing to check the power and the direction of the flash. If you keep your camera on the same settings as you will use for the shot, you get a good idea about that.

Back at the camera position for the group shot, I found the light to be too white, not powerfull enough and not perfectly aimed.

A CTO (orange) gel, a bit more power and a slight adjustment of the direction, solved the problem. Time to get the group out.

Some dodging and burning in Photoshop as well as softening some accidental harsh shadows (hard to avoid with such a big group in so little time) on the faces, was done to achieve the final result.

One more, a bit wider this time. The RAW image:

After the Photoshop corrections:

It’s crucial to keep talking to the group, otherwise people will start to look at eachother and anywhere but the camera. Keep it fun, but not too funny to avoid people rolling over the floor laughing. It’s hard to avoid ‘blinkers’, so take enough shots. I always try to take 2-3 shots in rapid succession. In case the perfect shot has one blinker, chances are that he has his eyes open in the previous or next shots and that you can easily photoshop the open eyes in the pictures without significant postprocessing time.

I’m pulling the plug of this blog for a week or two. The last few weeks have been exhausting for my and my family because of a combination of an unexpected big project, some expected projects and personal stuff. So until the beginning of august this blog and his master are taking a break.

Luckily I can look back with a good feeling towards all the work that has been done and I look forward to give you guys something to read again soon. A big thanks to my parents and a few good friends who are helping us out to make our dreams come through.

The pictures in this post were taken on a party by Uplace, one of my best clients. They know how to throw a party. I’ve seen quit a few great parties but nothing like this.

I don’t get to shoot a few of the best Belgian artists without the limitations that often make the life of concert photographers hell. During the show I was able to move freely. Too bad I’m not allowed to show you more recognisable pictures, because I made plenty. The true fans may recognise this fantastic woman but as this is not a competition, please leave her name out of the comments to avoid waking any sleeping dogs.

I’m often asked if I use off-camera flash for reportage photography and clearly the answer is yes. I went to scout the stage about an hour before the show and decided to add a flash to the stage lighting supports with a superclamp. I set to flash to 1/4 so I didn’t have to worry about running out of batteries or recycle time. I knew I’d make the best shots from the side and the back of the stage. So the flash straight in front of the stage would give me an edgy look. Another reason to position the flash at that spot was the placement of a smoke machine. Backlighting through smoke, always looks cool. The light that you see in the pics comes for 95% from a single small Vivitar.

You can see an impression of the party here.

See you next month!

Today we had to cover a pretty complicated job for a corporate client. The assignment asked for more hands than I posses myself so I got help from my intern Marisa and my favorite assistant Ake.

Ofcourse it’s very handy to have someone around to carry and hold equipment but a good assistant has to be much more than a mule. Ake is working hard on her own career as a photographer and she does great. She has the technical knowledge, she sees work and knows my way of working. Usually I don’t need much words to make clear what I want and often she is doing something even before I think about telling her to do it. Social skills are a very underrated asset of a good assistant. Talking to clients without being annoying is like walking on thin line. Ake keeps her balance on that line and by chatting to the client she gives me time to think, be creative and look for technical solutions.
The hardest part of being an assistant is probably the creative side. I want creative input from my assistants but at the same time I keep the right to ignore that input. It’s nothing personal but I’m not sure I could cope with it if I were assisting.

Because it was so stormy we set up each shot with Ake or Marissa as a stand-in. That way the client only had to be outdoors for a few minutes at the time. At one of those tests, I made this shot of Ake.

This shot is backlit with 2 Vivitar 285HV’s on both sides behind Ake. They are aimed (almost) past Ake’s back so only the edge of the beam feathers on Ake’s hat, hair and jacket. I think the flashes were set at 1/2 or 1/4 power. A third Vivitar with a Lastolite 60×60cm softbox was next to the camera (right) to light the face. I think it was at 1/4 or 1/16th. We let just enough ambient light in to get some blurred texture from the brick wall behind Ake in.

Hopefully the client will soon give me permission to show a few of the results from the actual shoot.

Shooting a corporate group shot might not be as apealing as shooting glamour or fashion, certainly not if you’re a creative photographer. But I actually like doing corporate work. I’m getting more and more clients that see the value of good photography. One of these clients is the Belgian Institute for Biotechnology. For them, good photography is a company policy. It really is great working for them.
A while ago I was asked to do a groupshot of their board of directors. The shoot was sceduled after sunset and I didn’t found a good indoor location for the shot. So we went outside in front of their HQ.

I used two speedlites on stands to my left and to my right. By placing these small flashes further away from the subjects and not too much to the sides, the light fall-off is not that extreme, so everyone gets a fair amount of light.
I gaffer taped a third flash to a railing behind the group to create some separation and make the image a bit stronger.
By photographing at iso 800 and using a shutterspeed of 1/13. I managed to keep some blue in the sky. By using flash to freeze any movement, I could work handheld at that shutterspeed.

I like creative challenges in terms of making an original image but I also like to be creative in terms of equipment and techniques to make the picture in difficult circumstances. Corporate clients very much appreciate the ability to improvise on the spot and work quickly. They also like it when you can limit the time you are actually shooting to a bare minimum. The time of each one of these directors is very valuable, so by shooting quickly I make the picture a lot cheaper. It took me no more than 5 minutes to make this picture. But that was only possible because I took the time to set up the shot and test the lighting untill I was sure it would work. Also I made sure I anticipated any problems and had a plan B, C and D ready when something wouldn’t work out as planned.