Nikon D3S, 24 – 120mm, ISO 200, f/9, 1/60

Lighting Setup

This first photo by itself may not make a lot of sense to light and shoot the photo this way. However, when I was asked to help my son with all his friends on prom night I had to be able to shoot a lot of couple shots and group shots in a very limited time.

If you see the lighting diagram you will notice I put lights up behind the people and up the stairs behind them.  This is so I could shoot without having the drag the shutter too long to get the background to show up.  It also helped me by having very little shadow that didn’t have some light hitting it.  This meant that the dynamic range was in some ways compressed.

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I hope you are seeing that I didn’t move. What I did do is use the Nikon 24-120mm lens so I could stay put and just zoom in and out the accommodate the size of each grouping.

If I were to step forward I could end up casting a shadow into the photo.  By standing back you avoid the problem of the photographer casting a shadow.

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Nikon D3S, 14-24mm, ISO 200 f/9 1/60

This last photo helps you to understand one more reason I set the lights one way and left them alone.  I put the lights on light stands and then put them as high as I could make them go and then put sand bags on the bottom of the stands.

This helped be sure the light would drop off down behind people and make any shadows not hit people in the rows in back.  Also by having steps to use I was able to stack folks to get everyone in the photo and see their faces.

Summary

Many times what will determine how you photograph groups will be the time you have with the group and how many different groups you have in that time frame.  I have learned to setup for the biggest group and then place the smaller groups in the same space and just get closer with the camera.