This short guide is best suited for those with SLR cameras, but many of the newer smartphones are becoming more and more geared towards photography, with many offering multiple lenses and the option to manually adjust camera settings. If you happen to have a phone with these capabilities, this guide should also help you.
Trying to capture eye catching images can be tricky while following all the scientific guidelines to keep people safe, and one of the most difficult photographs to capture is a group shot. Having large gaps between people is far from ideal, so here are 4 quick tips to help get a great picture.
Go Outdoors! -
Where possible you should try and take your photographs outdoors, due to guidelines recommending the wearing of masks indoors, this allows your subject to remove their masks, which is obviously a bonus for a portrait picture.
Get creative with group positioning -
Rather than standing your subjects socially distanced in one long line, try to stagger them in separate rows to fill the gaps, or position them slightly behind and to the side of one another in a V formation to remove dead space from the background.
Stand further away and zoom in -
If you are using a camera with a proper zoom function (not a digital zoom!) try to take your pictures from further away from your subjects and zoom in, this will lessen the effects of perspective when your subjects are stood different distances from the camera, and stop people looking gigantic in the foreground or lost in the background.
Use a higher aperture -
The problem with having your subjects standing different distances from the camera is it can be hard to keep everyone in focus, especially when using a zoom lens. To counteract this, try to shoot your pictures at a higher aperture, as this will increase your depth of field (that’s how much of your picture will be in focus).
A more advanced technique we use at i-creation is to create a composite image, where we cut out different areas from multiple images and stitch them together. By doing this you can move your subjects closer together than would be safe to do so in person, and create ultra-sharp images, even when people are stood in various distances from the camera. To do this requires, editing software, photoshop expertise and a deeper understanding of photography, but as always, for optimum results, it’s best to call in the professionals.