Many things have been difficult if not impossible during the pandemic. For corporate portrait photographers, doing individual portraits has been possible with the appropriate safety measures. But doing group portraits is a different situation and requires thinking outside the box. Read on to find out how we accomplished this.
The great team at Anesi Ozmon contacted us with a request for a group shot recently. Using our extensive experience with greenscreen portrait photography, we were able to photograph each person individually and then composite everyone into the same shot. In the words of their President, John M. Popelka, “We were very pleased with the results of the photoshoot. We gave you what we thought was an impossible task and you handled it with ease and professionalism.”
We made careful measurements on all of the camera and lighting settings so that the subjects, the background as well as any future attorneys’ photos can all be seamlessly integrated. And that brings up a few additional benefits of doing group shots this way, pandemic or no pandemic:
- Each person can be photographed many times and then the very best expression for each person can be used, vs just picking an image of everyone where most of the people look “pretty good”.
- Inevitably there are changes in the appearance of the members over time. And even the individuals themselves within a company can change. By photographing each person separately and building the group in photoshop, it’s quite simple (with the appropriate experience) to photograph and add or remove people.
- Finding a time when every member of the leadership team of a company can be present is a logistical nightmare. Often, the leadership of a national or global company work in different locations. And even if they are all in the same city, there’s always the chance of a scheduling conflict or that someone will not be feeling well enough. (I’ll never forget doing a 50-person global leadership team portrait on a day that the CEO came down with food poisoning and we were able to mark all of our positions and photograph him separately the next day).
So, doing group portraits this way can be a great solution to many headaches, even in our –hopefully very soon– post-pandemic world!
