The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..
I’ve recently had the honor of photographing a large family portrait session. This assignment comes from one of my Club members, Bob Maher. When Bob first contacted me, he asked if I was capable of photographing 16 people in my studio. He explained that he wanted his family portrait taken of all his children and their kids too. Right away I said, “Absolutely, yes!”
I instantly recalled the May 2010 issue of Professional Photographer magazine. I specifically remember this particular issue because the cover photo was a tri-fold layout of a large family group shot taken by Drake Busath, a professional photographer in Salt Lake City, Utah. This cover image featured 15 people within the group portrait, 2 grandparents, 4 independent families, and 5 grandchildren with 1 more on the way. This was a challenge that I definitely wanted to tackle. I’ve done large group shots before, (i.e. Weddings Parties, Corporate Employees, and Cheerleader Squads), but I have never done one this large in my studio.
The magazine article about Drake told of his large family portrait philosophy. He breaks down the separate families into their individual clusters, photographs them separately, and stitches the separate images together in Photoshop.
Thus, this was my main plan of action. First, I began photographing each family unit separately. This way, I was able to control the smaller groups to assure that I got the perfect shot from each family unit.
After each family unit was photographed, the next step was the post-processing. I have found that working with a High Key White backdrop setting gives me a better results than working with a typical Chroma Key Green or Blue backdrop. This assures that the background will remain consistent and the editing will be very quick.
Thus, this became my final composite image. The main focus was to keep all the images consistent with composition and camera height. The editing segment was really easy. All it took was a full understanding of Layer positioning, Layer Mask, and proper cropping.
I have to thank Bob for giving me this opportunity to attempt this project and Drake Busath for sharing his knowledge and techniques.
