Sept 3rd. F---in Fridays

What up ya'll. You ever have one of those days where you get out of bed on the wrong side and then trip over some crap and find out there's no more cereal? Yeah, that was today. I got a email from Dawson 2 days ago about reprints for a job I was hired for before Christmas. It was a cool little gig. Gist of it was that there was a few graduating classes that wanted a nice group photo of themselves all dressed up in their Sunday Best, on a white seamless and to look a little commercial. No Prob, the job went around and made its way to me, because I was quickest to figure out the one little hick up in the request. The seamless at school are only 9 feet wide and due to angles and some other can't break rules of portrait photography, only 5 people Max can fit in the frame at one time.
So how does one get around this little problem?

Easy, Pre-Poduction. I used a super easy lighting patter that I know will never let me down for big wide open whites. Plus I needed to keep everything the same with out moving any lights or my camera. I only wanted to move the people not the set
See lighting diagram.
Now the real trick to this is that if I have to shoot 15-20 people and I can only get 5 on set at a time I would need 3-4 shots to complete the group, right?
Boom PhotoShop, but the bitch about photoshop is it will only work with what you give it. So in a nut shell I got the group together and had them pose as a group. Then rearranged and tweaked out like we all had done to us back in Grade School. Then I asked them all to look to their right and left and remember who was there and more importantly the positions they were in when standing next to them. Then I cut them into smaller groups of 4-5 and told the people on the edges that they had the most important job to remember How they were standing next to the other person to their right or left. I Broke down what I was going to do in Photoshop and they all looked at me like I was bonkers. Then the last trick that I kept to myself was that if all these Kats were going to be in a curve, they need to be curved so I made little adjustments and "Cheated" the angles, and everything seemed to be okay.

Next step pop those things into PS, make them all the same Ress and size and start slapping them together. Like everything else in the world of Adobe there are 100 ways to do any 1 thing. I chose the easy way. Layer them one onto of each other working from right to left and start erasing what i didn't need. If everything works out well in Pre-Production Post-Production should be a snap. And it was, they groups literally slid in next to each other and no one is the wiser. Happy Cast, Happy Client, Happy Photographer.

Like most things in life Photography is full of decisions to make. Each one will effect the next, so you gotta think about where your going and how you want to get there. That reminds me, it smells like rain is coming better close the windows before bed. Good Night.