Group Photos… Techniques

Group Photos are mostly easy to shoot… and I’ve come to notice that some group photos are meant for a different meaning, and some are for a more formal and professional shoots.

Here are some of the group photos I have taken… and you tell me which one you like most.

Simple group photo shots would involve this very common and basic shoot… Arrange everyone according to height and just shoot.

A more interesting shots, would be arranging people in a more different manner… and in a more relaxed form… still keeping the rule same : one row.

For an even better group photo, you can try layering the people, two or more rows… but most of the time, I stick to this very important rule : people in the picture should be big, not small small faces… but sometimes, this rule has to be broken, eg. Too many people…

Note: Thanks to Chun Nee for taking this shot.

Although the faces in the previous photo may look a bit small, but they are still reasonable… and is not as bad as this…

This is way way way too small… try to avoid this whenever possible… but in such circumstances, you can try multi-tier… the photo above has 8 tiers, and if possible, add more tiers. Reason behind it, try to increase in height, rather than width… this would enable you to move in closer to your subjects, and thus, increase in facial size… not to the stage of being able to see the pimples la…

You can also try to photograph people from high above… you can do this if there is a high rise building around you, that enables you to do that… I don’t have a shot of this type, but you can take a look at this poster shot…

Another interesting method you can try is, by combining some of the techniques together… I think you’ve seen these types of movie / drama posters before… for example…

Ugly Betty…

Grey’s Anatomy…

 

Heroes…

This technique is not hard actually, just that… you need to spend more time to arrange the people. and if you are close to the people or you know them very well, you’re most definitely going to spend a hell lot of time to arrange them…

Reason behind it is that your friends would not take your work seriously, so they tend to play around or shift in position once you arranged them… so ended up, more time required. This is the time where you take charge, tell them what YOU want, or else you’re going no where…

The concept is that you put space in between people, regardless of height, order, or position… but at the same time, make sure they are in order.

so here are some of my work… not much, but at least something…

One of my long time favourite…

I posted this in February’s entry… they’re quite close friends, and again, it took me some time to arrange them. Simple, chaos in order…

The irony of the playground really brings out the shot… professionals at a playground… go figure…

and here is my work today…

I personally like this shot, because it incorporates the small “business hall” at the back, giving the impression of professionals working in concrete jungle. Also, this shot shows a lot of ‘oomph’ that these people are real professional in their work…

But due to the usage of the photo, I have no choice but to crop the photo to suit the printing purposes…

Still it looked real nice, and these people are real fantastic to work with… easy going, cooperative (as expected, haha!)…

Anyways, I don’t think these few shots I took today is not good enough… the people arrangement is still not chaotic enough… haha… and some of them overlapped with each other. Must space them out even more…

You can try to put the most important person of the group of people in the middle. But sometimes, it doesn’t work and rules are meant to be broken…

Also, here’s another technique you guys can try… arrange them at the staircase… something like this…

So… I hope you learn something from this post… next time, take a different approach when photographing people, especially group photos…