Large Group Photos Setup

Large group photos are difficult, at best, to get good shots. Add some other factors, such as changing light and variable group numbers, and you've just added some interesting complexities for the shoot.

In our case, our client wanted alumni group photos for different eras.

• The number of alumni ranged from 10-60 people.
• The only location that made "sense" to host this wide range of numbers was in the outdoors atrium, where the light was going to drastically change between the different shoots (from nice perfect 5pm light to night).

So, when we did our first walk-through, we decided to make use of a few steps in the outdoor location. In this way, we could stack alumni members on those few steps to get a range of height, and spread out groups as needed.

We went with simple lighting setup. There were two large octogon softboxes controlled by a power source behind the photographer blasting light onto the scene.



Also, the photographer used a step stool to give her some height as well as a wider-angle lens to get large numbers in the frame. Obviously, there was going to be some distortion in the final image, but Lightroom & Photoshop easily corrected any distortion issues.