Large Group Lighting

Jeff, Brian, and Brent talk through the camera settings, flash modifiers, and flash locations to take a portrait of a large group.

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How to Shoot Large Group Portraits

When shooting very large groups (like 50-100) of people you have to get them on a hill or on stands so that you can put them 6-8 rows deep and still have the faces of all the people be seen.  Add flash with reflective umbrellas on light stands to the left and right of the group up high enough that shadows are not cast on the faces. Get the camera up high. Shoot with an aperture stopped down at f/8 to f/16, shutter at 1/160 (if using flash) and ISO 100.

I love the question from Jessica Jean in the Facebook group that we are going to cover here at the top of the show because this has happened for me over the past 3 or 4 years now that I get contacted by somebody, usually a friend of mine, and they ask if there is any way I could help them with a photo of their extended family that is gathering for Thanksgiving or Christmas.  

Usually the story is that the extended family hasn’t been all together in many years and so grandma wants to have a professional photo taken because she fears she may never get the chance to do that again.  In fact, that has happened for me again here in 2018. I did two shoots of large extended family groups the day after Thanksgiving. With one of them they had only a single member of the extended family that can’t make it and so we are going to have my oldest son stand in for him in the photo and they are going to have me photoshop his head in there.

Jessica asked 3 questions in the Facebook group that I already provided by advice on there for how I approach lighting large groups, but let’s go through it here and I want to get your thoughts Brent and Brian.

Jessica Jean: “Can you give me some advice? I’ve been hired to do my first indoor event where the client wants photos of each individual family and one large group (80 people). I have recently purchased a 24-70 and two soft boxes and two umbrellas for my speedlights. Here are my questions:

What is best for this event? soft boxes or umbrellas?

How far away should I have the lights from the smaller groups and for the gigantic group?

What settings should my camera and speedlights be at

Any other tips or tricks I’d love to hear!”

How to get all the faces of a large group seen?

Getting the people on risers AND the camera up high is the best way to have a shot at getting all of the faces in a very large group portrait to be seen.

First off, not really about the lighting, but 80 people is a lot!  The last “large” group I shot was only 32 people. I don’t think I have ever shot a portrait with 80 people in it.  The challenge there is getting it so that you can see all 80 people in the photo. With 32 people I had to put them in 4 rows, having the first row sit down and then carefully positioning the people with the taller in the back and make it so that all of their bright smiling faces could be seen.  

Even then, I had to be up higher than the people in order to really get them all to be seen in the photo.  I had a little hill I was standing on to make that work but bringing a ladder to stand on w...