Group Portraits

My best advice to you when doing a large group portrait is don't over think it. Last week we went to Mechanicsburg, Pa to meet up with Wendy's family. Since this was going to be a once in a life time event for her she asked that I take a portrait of everyone. Everyone includes me too. Her parents drove up from Florida, her oldest daughter, husband and two children flew in from California, her son, his wife and two children drove up from West Virginia, her youngest daughter and son drove in from Newville,Pa and we drove down from Niagara Falls, NY. See what I mean a big deal don't mess this up. The key with groups and kids is speed and efficiency. If you don't work fast you'll lose the attention of your group. Fortunately I have trained Wendy on posing large groups when we did weddings and as soon as the gang arrived she quickly posed everyone in a pleasing position in the predetermined spot we picked for our photo. While she did that I quickly mounted the Nikon D3 to a tripod, set my camera up in the parking lot set it to iso 400 because I wanted fill flash ( SB910 ) on camera to lift the shadows, f-11 to get enough depth of field to cover both rows of people, 1/60 sec to sync with flash and under expose background one stop. I used a wireless remote to trigger the camera. The flash also helped to get the kids looking at the camera (most of them). One flash to get everyone's attention then five more frames to get everyone looking at the camera and eyes open. Six images total in under three minutes from start to finish. This was the best of the group.