How To Shoot Large Groups

How To Shoot Large Groups

by William Lulow

As with most photographic projects, success begins with planning. Whenever I have a  large group to photograph, the first thing I do is to try to scope out the location to make sure I can set up my lights as necessary.

The next thing I do is to arrive at the location in plenty of time to set up and do some test exposures.  Most of the time, shooting large groups will make lighting the background necessary (unless the shot is outdoors).  Your main lights, no matter if they’re portable or studio lights, just will not be able to light up the background as well as the people. So, you will need to light the background separately. Sometimes you can achieve this with a bounce flash, but when you’re in a large space with high ceilings, it may not be possible.

In this image, I lit the group with two umbrellas and used a normal reflector placed behind the group and aimed up, to light the background. The location was a store and I wanted to give it some sense of depth. Plus, if the background is light, most people with darker hair will stand out more thereby making for a better composition.

After setting up the lights, the hardest part of doing a large group is arranging the people.  Sometimes the best way is by trial and error. I like to avoid having everyone’s head on the same line in the picture. Therefore, I’m always looking for things people can sit on or stand on to vary the heights of the heads in the photo. I even bring boxes and sometimes ladders for them to stand on and stools for them to sit on. I have some leaning and some straight up. Then I’ll take several shots. This particular image took about thirty shots to get.

Once all the people are arranged satisfactorily, the next step is to make sure that everyone’s expression is good. Sometimes I’ll have a short word to say like “Say pizza.” That usually elicits a laugh and some smiles because they’re expecting me to say  “Say cheese.”  So anything different will get a better response.  You may not get everyone to smile, but you’ll at least get some pleasant expressions.

Then there are really huge groups where you need to get everyone in the frame and they all have to look good as well as be identifiable. This was a large corporate shoot which actually took place in the building in NYC that houses the studio for Rachel Ray’s TV program. We used an adjacent studio which was empty at the time:

Images like this need to have enough light to make sure that you can shoot at a small enough aperture to ensure that your depth-of-field will cover everyone. The lighting on this set consisted of four lights on the background (two on each side) as well as a large umbrella light camera left and a large softbox aimed in a downward to also cover some of the floor, on camera right. The power on the umbrella main light was 1600 watt/seconds which gave me an aperture of around f/11 for the shot. (Sometimes you just need a lot of power to provide enough light).

Here is a group shot that only required two fill-in lights, one camera left and one camera right to make sure everyone was lit. Shooting outdoors makes photographing larger groups a lot easier since ambient light takes care of the background.

Then, of course you can sometimes capture a decent group with just a flash-on-camera setup. This was made using my on-camera bounce flash, ISO 400, f/5.6 @1/100th of a second. Again, when there is enough ambient light and you don’t have to worry about carrying focus a great distance, these settings will usually work.

When doing large groups you have to develop a technique that will get everyone’s attention and make them all look good at the same time. Not always an easy feat to accomplish.