These are my notes and thoughts on how to take group photos. I’ve done this a lot for the Newspaper.
Each year the Dolphin swim club gets a shot of the whole group for their web site and for the booster ad in the Chilkat Valley News, and sometimes I get to shoot it. Last year, I think Ron shot it. I like it when they are in the pool with their goggles on looking tough. I really like this year’s shot. I like Gabby’s smile and wave right in the middle of the front. It really captures the moment and makes me smile.
is that individual that likes to lurk behind others. This partial obstruction to the left is pretty bad. The dude to the right is almost totally obscured.
This last example, below, has a person that is almost totally obscured, as she is placed twixt two girls that are standing arm-in-arm, plus she is not turned toward the camera.
GRRRrrrrr.
Any time a group is large, it’s tough to get a good shot of everyone because inevitably someone stands behind another person with just their eyes pointing out. I hate that when someone assumes that their face is visible just because they can see the camera. Once the group is assembled, the prime requirement is that everyone’s face is visible. . Explain to them how to find a window for them to look through between two other people that are in front of them.
Of course it’s best if the group is clearly identified by the picture alone, so the group should be properly attired: in their Sunday best, if they go to church, in somewhat consistent clothes if they’re a family (like jeans and white shirts, they should avoid clashing colors or styles if at all possible), teams should be in uniform and be in a location that they gather, like the basketball court or football field, and they need to look their best so that they are like how they look in the newspaper. If the group is a basketball team, they should have with a basketball prominently placed in the photo, as seen below. Even if it’s clear what type of team is in the photo, years later, people will be thankful that the town and year were added to the photo. A serious scrapbook person or family researcher will even appreciate the individual names in years to come.
Once everyone is dressed properly and on location, then a suitable arrangement of the people is needed. Often its’ good to get a variety of poses, one for each application: the traditional shot is the money shot, it’s the one that’s going to go on the trophies or in the newspaper, so that’s the FIRST shot to get, then if time allows, try get an alternate shot that’s creative, like putting then in a circle and shooting up at them from the floor or down at them from a ladder, or anything else weird like just acting goofy. If it’s a stunt team, then they might be in a cool pose.
It’s important to keep time restraints in consideration, if the group is a team, and the shot is done during practice, then be as quick as possible, be ready when the coach says it’s time to take the shot, and make the shoot go quickly.
In the photo above, the distracting background is often best dealt with using a ladder to get up above the group. Also, the girl on the front had her legs askew, which tends to distract the eye. When you want a certain body position from the subject, often it is best to demonstrate the proper pose, rather than to explain it, as there is often too much to explain. Tell them to “sit like this… ” and then show them how. Notice the girls on the front left spread their fingers out in a claw-like manner and this is distracting. As a rule, fingers are distracting in a photo and their appearance should be minimized. In a traditional pose, the legs should be pointed vertically if possible.
I shoot with Canon XXD cameras (a 20D and a 40D). It’s important to get as much detail as possible on each face, so a Low ISO is necessary (ISO 400 and below is great when using a modern DSLR), this often means a flash will be used, if the group is large, then a smaller aperture will be nice to use to maximize depth of field, and of course, it would be best if the shutter speed were at least 1/60th or so to stop most subject blur and minimize the effect of camera shake.
Concerning tripods and vantage points, Image stabilization is preferred over a tripod for stability due to it’s mobility, but will not be sufficient in most cases when the photographer is going to be in the photograph due to the effect of gravity. Of course if the photographer is going to be in the shot, a nice tripod that extends quite high is real nice to have, alternately if the camera can be placed and stabilized on a high point, like a car, that can work out fine, or sometimes the group can be placed at the base of a hill with the camera up a little higher.
There is less distortion in the photo if the photographer is further away than if the photographer is close to the group. In the group shot above (taken by Chris Bowman, who did a fine job), notice how the guys in the back have really small heads compared to the girls in the front. This is the distortion I mean. To avoid this, outside, bring a long telephoto, arrange the group, then scoot back further to minimize the distortion. Indoors, often the room constraints make it impossible to stand a reasonable distance away from the group and so the picture will have people that are very large near the front of the photo and very small if they are in the back of the photo. Many non photographers will notice something is not quite perfect about the photo, but will not be able to pin down exactly what is bothering them unless it is pointed out. Nevertheless, scoot back to shoot the photo whenever possible In this photo, Chris moved out of the room and into the band director’s office as far as he could.
It’s important to know the layout of the final photo. Is it going to be on a vertical page and does the editor want it to be a vertical or a horizontal. Shoot both formats if you’re not sure. If the primary purpose of the photo is to make 8x10s for family then care must be taken to frame the shot properly. In the photo above, it is difficult to crop the photo as an 8×10 due to the lack of empty space on the sides. With the 8×10 format, an inch is cut off the sides of each photo when shooting with a traditional DSLR or SLR which has a native form factor of 8×12. It’s difficult to find frames for 8×12 photos at discount centers, so it’s recommended that the photographer leave additional space along the long ends of the frame: to the sides when shooting in landscape mode (horizontally), and on the top and bottom, when shooting in portrait mode (vertically). Sometimes the effects of a poorly framed shot can be mitigated by adding additional space at the top and bottom of the frame, as seen below. The neutral gray color was selected using the color picker on the carpet in photoshop. If Chris had had more time, he would have used the clone tool to clone the carpet on the space below–the lights above would have been tougher to clone.
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One of the reasons I haven’t posted much lately is that I’ve been staying until 6 PM at school to work out with the wrestling team. Having not wrestled in over 20 years, I’m a bit out of shape and am quite sore and tired most of the time. Thankfully, I don’t have to go on a dehydration diet like I did back in the day, but regretably, I’m about 35 pounds heavier now (167 lbs in the mornings) than I was back in HS–and not all of it’s muscle.
At first it was my neck that was taking a severe beating, but gradually my whole body got sore. I think it’s good for me though.
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I saw this video today from www.Godaddy.com, the company that I host my domain at, and really thought it was funny. It requires a bit of bandwidth. To be honest, it’s a bit out on the edge, as far as parodies go. It’s making fun of the 3rd circuit court’s decision to nix the fine CBS got for the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction a few years back. Perhaps I should not leave it up.
Let me know if you think it’s funny, or just inappropriate. If you want you can skip along to about half way through the video and save some time.
Here’s a link, incase the video does not imbed.
I thought it was pretty funny.
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There’s only one week left of Teeball: there’s a Wednesday practice, then a double header on Saturday.
Today we went to Teeball and had a great time. Mark is really coming along, in terms of enjoying the game, hitting the ball, throwing the ball, catching the ball, and understanding the game.
When he batted, I had him stand back from the base in such a way that he’d hit the ball down the third base line. You can see he’s a bit back towards the backstop. As you can probably tell from the green fleece he’s wearing, it was a bit chilly and even a bit rainy this morning, plus we don’t have any grass on the field–but that keeps the bugs down too.
Today, we only had four of the teammates show up for the game, so we had five people total on the Reds team. Almost all of our experienced kids were not there. This was both good and bad, because everyone got to play in an interesting position on the field, and everyone also got to bat three times because we had three innings, and also because we didn’t really field that well, compared with when we have our experienced kids there.
Mark’s favorite thing about Teeball is running the bases at full speed. He knows where all the bases are, how he can get out, where to run, when to stop (when we tell him to) and that it’s not a terrible thing to get ‘out,’ it’s just something that happens to everyone from time to time.
He does best if I stand right next to him and encourage him when he’s fielding and such.
Behind the backstop, there’s a huge sand pile that the little siblings like to play on when the older ones are playing ball. I need to take some pictures of that hill. Another thing Luke likes to do is pick flowers. I think that’s pretty cute for a three year old.
One thing you might notice from this picture is that Luke is a ‘lefty’ He’s been that way from the beginning: always preferring his left hand over his right. He eats left handed, throws, catches, hits, and high fives with it.
Mark wasn’t that way. When Mark was really young, he never showed a preference for one hand over the other. Then when he got to be about four years old. Some kids don’t differentiate their hands until, say 3rd grade–that can be a problem, especially when they are writing. It’s good for the brain to settle in to dedicated rolls early so further development can take place.
Looking at these pictures today reminds me that I need to buy those pictures from Steve Vick that he took earlier in the season. I really liked the one of Mark Daniel and I at home plate where I was pointing to show him where first base was.
Looking at this last picture of Mark, one thing you might not have noticed is the out-of-focus area in the photo. To me it has a nice quality to it and in photography lingo, that’s called Bokeh. Bokeh is a Japanese word which has to do with the quality of the image where the image is out of focus. For this shot, I was at 400mm on my 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6, ISO 400, f/8, 1/500. These are great settings for stopping action and getting pretty sharp photos of a kids baseball game. To really stop the threads on the ball and catch the dust in the air in a major league game on a double play with the runner sliding into second base, you’d need a higher shutter speed, say 1/1500 or so, I’d imagine. but 1/500 is just fine for capturing a teeball game.
Filed under: Canon, Family Stories, Photography, Sports | 2 Comments »
Well, Mark is old enough for T-Ball now, and so we’re getting started on that. It’s a little bit stressful for him, because we didn’t really prepare him for it mentally, or physically. We didn’t even get him any books on the subject for us to read to him–which is the standard procedure. We did get him a glove last year at the Sports Shop, and the J6 crew got him some size 12T baseball cleats.
On Monday, we told him we were going to start playing T-ball and we started working on throwing and catching, then on Wednesday we went to our first practice where he practiced some fielding and then some batting.
He was terrified of the batting, so that night we went and bought our own little practice T-Ball set so we could work on those skills. He liked the running to first base, but didn’t know where to find the base all the time and he definitely didn’t want to mess up and run to the wrong base. As soon as we got into the car after the first practice, we told him we had the first game on Saturday and he opened his mouth really wide and let out a big cry. He’d thought that T-ball was over and he wouldn’t have to do it again, then he found out we had a game on Saturday. It was tough for him.
On Saturday, he cried the whole way to the ball field and Holly was not sure that T-ball was what we needed to be doing. I explained that he’s at just the right age to learn T-ball and that later on it’d be too late because his peer group would already know how to catch, throw, and bat by then.
Photo by Steve Vick: CLICK HERE!! then click on T-ball for more of his pictures.
Many of these pictures are great, and I’m going to buy a few of Mark Daniel when I get some time. When these photos were taken, the T-ball teams didn’t have their uniforms yet, plus it was cold, so many of the kids were all bundled up in their fleece. (He’s on the Reds, so they have Red baseball t-shirts, and red hats with C’s on them.)
When he got up to bat the first time, he just held the bat and descended into a puddle of tears, holding the bat and looking at all the fielders watching him. Parents in the crowd, were cheering him on, “Come on Marky, You can do it.” I went out there and picked him up and carried him back to the dug-out.
We had a long talk about stress and doing what you’re supposed to, even when it’s scary. It was a tough talk. I talked about wrestling, and about teaching my first year. Then I told him, I’d go up there and be with him when he bats next time.
So when it was his turn to bat the next time, it looked like he was doing great, but he didn’t want to swing. So I went up to him and asked him how he was doing, and he was just about to cry again. He said, “I don’t know where first base is. Where is it?”
I pointed over to it, and then he was fine. He hit the ball to third base, and made it to third, since they over threw first. They only played two innings, since each kid gets to bat each inning.
When we got out to the car, Mark was all happy because he’d finished T-ball. Bummer. We had to explain to him that this was just the first of six weeks of Saturday morning games.
When he hear that, his eyes teared up, he opened his mouth for a the mother of all breaths. Holly and I held our ears. Then he let loose again.
Sometimes, that’s how it goes, I suppose.
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