Lessons

Lesson Info

Group Posing

It's very hard to arrange. I'm thankful that I was a graphic designer before I became a photographer, so I was used to arranging elements and so that was fairly easy for me because I've been doing it for twelve years. I've been arranging elements on pieces of paper, but it's the same thing with people, so I sort of had a feel to it beforehand. Okay, polls? What if when you want to do a group shot, the first thing you do is look for even lighting shade, something that has plete ly, even lighting. And even in this case, I didn't have even lighting because you can see some highlights on their hair. But it was the best I could do. This was the on ly place in the entire it was like smoking hot that day. It was like ninety or one hundred degrees. And so this was the on ly area. There were some shade and people could give me a nice natural smile without being fille burned up. Ok, so that's the first thing is they used fine look for even lighting and so sometimes all you got in this case, I've...

got a picnic table and I've got shade. That's it so that's what? I had them okay. So post subjects and even lighting no hot sauce, use a flash. I use a little bit of flash and there to create those rich deep colors see the color popping out on that. And so when you use your flash, you're able to really is off camera flash to really pop the color in this case. Also, what I do is I zoom. I've used the longest lens possible because what happens is when you use the longest lens possible, it compresses the image, which means when you use your longer lens, it brings the background closer to the subject and makes it look bigger. And then you get that blurred out effect like that. So in this case, I think I shot it at seventy millimeter ders. Okay, that's it. If I had longer, I would have shot it at longer. We looked even better with more blurrier background. And so in this case here, this was in paris this wedding, and they wanted to walk all the way across and get this. They had their wedding in this fourteen centuries mansion. It was a cat. Actually, it was really it was a castle there's, a real moat around the whole thing and whatever, but they wanted that in the background. So we got over the other side and I go well, you can't hardly see the matching at this point, so I had to just zoom it out at one hundred five millimeters, walk away back to bring that mansion forward same thing here? Well, no, this is not the same thing, but what makes things created for me like I have my basic poses but what gets my creative juices going to make me do something different structures structures get my creative juices going because then I could get my graphic design mind in and I can place elements in different places so what we did, we found this abandoned, you know, trains and so I got them up there, I had to pose every single person say they just don't naturally do this, you've got to do it and so you got you got this takes practice, teo actually pose and then because the problem is this you're gonna pose her by the time you get to be posing him. She's changed already she's walking over here doing something, doing her facebook or whatever. So you've got to really keep their attention going and you know if they say they don't move, stay right there, stay with me how you guys stay with me, everybody, I just need a few minutes hang in there, we're gonna get this done keep talking to him like that, right? And then I start posing everybody and by the time they're I get the picture but you gotta really talk it through to make sure that they don't move here's another thing it's like in on the beach and so I posed every single person, every single part literally lean forward. Okay, you guys go back to back. Okay? You go this way, you elf? Dude, you gotta lean on one leg, okay? Come over here. You in this as you're back there, right? Pop your hip for me out. Oh, thank you. Okay, dude, but your leg, every single person was posed by me and that's the cases which you got to do and so that's why? I said, you gotta learn how to pose one person before you composed a lot of people because they're not going to naturally fall into place like that. You've got to make it happen. Okay, interesting shot structures create different moods. Okay, let's say you got this is the bridal party. This is what I had to deal with and shoot it. They want me to shoot a big group picture of them. All I had was one six chairs, so I took the six chairs, put them across then I've automatically got three levels or more right so I got people on the ground then I got people sitting on the chairs and I got people above so one roller chairs convey your best friend when you're trying to pose huge groups you have automatically three levels and then make them do something. What do you think I said to them here yeah make a funny face that same thing right chairs that's all I had levels put them in the shade take a shot and then make him do something interesting this post every created a scene I saw this little cafe on the side they wanted something different okay let's create this romantic moment right? And so like oh, I'm killing myself right now because I should have turned her head more towards the camera and him the other way but any way's ok, but that I had to pose every single one of those people every single one you sit down you two sit down together oh, you lean okay, okay, you guys talk to each other every single person I had to post it's not that easy it's not that easy, but with practice you keep doing it, then you can create something like that here this was that made these air, those amazing dancer people they came up to me and say, hey, scott, we want to do a couple freezes I had no idea what a freeze wass right? Because it's a dancing move right and so okay great right ok, well find me some shade and so hey did they went into his freeze right? And I was on my stomach taking this picture create different angle for it and they naturally pose themselves into that there'll awesome hiking so easy just like went into it themselves that was the easiest posing ok, look, a creative angle you don't got anything you wanna do something different, you get on the ground and you showed up uh shoot up and you have them lean forward and do something interesting to be creative about it. Okay? Um here I'm creating different by putting the groom lower and moving him forward and having his men in the background again these guys are awesome. They just pose that way. They're all dancers, so they just like food kind of all leaning with one leg, right? But if they don't you're gonna have to do that with the men because they're going to stand up really stiff and straight. Okay, you got to take a high angle sometimes so when everybody's on the same level you're not gonna be able to see them unless you raise your camera up really high and so this is the case here where I had them all together leading together and I took my camera real high and I shot it so I can see everybody if I didn't have my camera angle high it wouldn't be able to see everybody saying here this was like way up here so I could see everybody in that school bus so she was a teacher and so what she did was rented a school bus take everybody around him okay, now I'm taking a lower angle where I'm using stairs instead of shooting up on the stairs I'm shooting down below and separating her by bringing over her to the wall here again I'm using stairs chairs, that's all I had these guys are taller than me so what I gotta do is I gotta get them down spread them out then I'm standing on top of a chair also on top of that so I not only have my cameras that's more than that I'm actually standing on the chair so I can create this distance between them if I didn't know his head would be right over his head and that doesn't look cool so you gotta get raised the angle so you could create distance uh between the subjects sometimes the bride and the groom are going to come up to you I'm going to say we want to get a picture of the entire wet a guest all of the guests what do you do? You have to take a higher angle so you find anywhere where you can get above and shoot everybody so you're you know I'm above them and I'm doing this looking right to get that higher angle once you go higher than you can see everybody okay movement through a scene again so you khun create a scene and then you can have them move through the scene and create some kind of emotion there that's what I did here same thing I had them run at me I took a slow shutter. Okay, this is great if you want to have them move but the bridal party is large if you want to keep them together I have them hold hands or link arms because what happens if you have them run through this scene when you do it she's way over here she's faster because they don't run at the same rate but if you have link hands then they're going to stay together and they're going to make sure you got the shot if they're linking hand and so I do arman are so this is a particular post that I do just to create something free interesting background I have them lock arms okay let's haven't do that. Okay, all the ladies come up here stand up here. We're going to shoot this way here, okay, so stand right here and lock arms okay yeah, you get okay, so yeah, go arm in arm okay now on the count of three I want you to walk this way and I want you to give me something really sexy and exaggerated okay and look at each other and have fun smile ready go click click click click click click click right that's not good enough you didn't sell me go do it again all right so do it again one more time come on grab one wants something some laughter haha fun just going to have the best time of your life ready go sell it still in there you go bam bam bam bam there altogether thank you very much c they're all together at that point and not there's not one straying off so I can keep them organized because if you have them do that by themselves it's not gonna work like I guarantee you one person this like this this is what's gonna happen is that they're going to just go crazy but in this particular case I wanted that to happen. It wasn't necessary for me to get everybody but I wanted that feel of running through a scene. Okay what? This is the worst case scenario ever bright light um and you've got to shoot this photo so what you've got to do is use to light stands and you've gotta create light on each side here with two light stands if I had my eye on camera flash on lee this distance is farther away than these two so let's say I was taking a picture of you folks okay? And it was really bright light ok, if I was shooting here to get you every everybody's frame, my flash would be how far away like ten feet away, but I couldn't move my flashes in closer if I have one here and I have one here, if I have the distance to my subjects, my flash becomes four times more powerful, okay? So even moving something just a couple feet could make a huge difference in power. I want to get into the inverse square law because we don't have time right now, but just trust me, so if you are in this situation and you need to shoot in this extremely bright light you're going to need just trust me, you're going to need a lot of light, okay? So in this particular case I had to flash is they're probably on half power each and that they're close to illuminate the subjects they're and I even had one on camera flash too, just to fill it. So if you're in this situation and you're for shooting a group like that, make sure you have to light stands or you got two assistants holding your flash for you off to the side so you could get that light really close instead of far back okay. Using umbrella one outdoor event. Uh here, right. So I'm shooting a group. This is just one umbrella. I'll go over this lighting a little bit later too. Is that one umbrella? One flash, but the trick is, let me show you the formula. I've gone over this in my lighting lecture too, so I'm gonna go over really fast because a lot of people seen this already. So what you do basically is you just put your eyes so high that six this is why I said it's important for you to get a high I s o because sometimes you need to shoot it. Hi, I I s so in this case I do is that sixteen hundred that made my flash sixteen times more powerful so I could put it through one umbrella, get that put it on one quarter power. If you're ten feet away, it should do the job for you. So that's the formula. So if you're twelve feet away or ten feet away, just don't don't ask me any questions. Just do it works. You could figure out the madly get my other lecture and you'll understand why I put it at a quarter power, and bam, you should have enough power to do it, okay? And so outdoors the obr ella out night gives me this nice huge soft light so when you're outdoors you khun take a great light if I had on camera flash here this shot would not look the way it's going to look but because I could use this off camera huge light coming down um I can get a shot like that right? We'll go over the flash techniques a little bit later this is more about posing so we'll just kind of broke through that so one thing is that group shots really reflect your positive energy when you're going to get an entire group to give you the same emotion the photographer said something because they naturally don't do that so when you want to create this energy there you look at these people doesn't that remind you of me when you see the expression on their face because I am trying I am getting that energy out of them making them laugh doing something so that they will give it to me so group shots really reflect your positive energy and how what you create to the scene and what you make them do here I'll tell him to do a air kiss see that look you're not going to get that look until unless they buy into the photographer taking the picture it just won't be the same so this was an indian wedding and I you know like I've been with them for several days or whatever, and so we had a great relationship, so they're giving me a genuine smile here you're not going to get it that special extra sauce unless they buy into you. They have to buy into what you're doing. This is a scene that created were just threw some flowers on them and made them, um, kind of pretend that they had the best time of their life throw flowers on them, shoot it, group shots can make you or break you. Why do I say that? This? Because when you do a group shot that's the time everybody who's thinking about having a wedding next is watching you. Every time I went to a wedding, I said, I'm getting two weddings out of this and I would perform for those people who were interviewing me and when's the best time that you can let people see your skills is during the group shots, everybody sees you, the groom, that the groomsman that's getting married next, the bridesmaids that scaring mess that's when you're getting your having a job interview during your group shots, so if you're creating positive energy and you're doing a great job, people going to come up to you, I'm sure they said this all can you're awesome? Yeah, they haven't even seen your photos. But they like that positive energy that you're giving them and that's what's gonna get you the most weddings. We go into the business side of it. That's, what's gonna get you rave, so don't take thes group shots lightly. It's really what's gonna put you over the top.