Large Group Photos - Specialty Wide Shots

Those above age 30 may remember back when the photographers would come to your school, church, or business and make everyone stand on those rickety crescent shaped risers so they could take your picture with a rotating camera. Then later you'd get the print rolled up in a tube, because it was so wide... Ah, those were the days, and some really cool pictures, too! Photographing a group of 50, 100, or more people requires special methods to get a quality picture, and for decades that was the way to go.

Unfortunately, digital cameras that can take a continuous rotating picture so rare as to be virtually non-existent, and the people who do that on film are mostly retired now. Even the very fancy professional camera models like the ones I use simply can't replicate those photos in a single shot. Most of today's digital photographers don't know how to deal with this issue at all, as it's a bit esoteric. Those not "in the know" will take a one-frame group photo that simply does not have enough detail to show the faces of 100 or more people in the frame. Due to lack of detail relative to the number of people in the picture, the prints will look muddy and lacking in detail next to those great roll-up prints of the past.

Lucky for you, I have been studying the arcane art of panoramic photography for last three years! While it's still quite true that you can't take a good large group photo in a single frame, you can use a variety of special techniques to get fantastic large group photos by making a composite of multiple images.

Below is a small detail from a large group photo. Click on it to see the entire photo, and be sure to scroll sideways!



The source composite image from which that example was scaled down is a gigantic 148 Megapixels, which is the type of detail you need to capture 200 people in a frame. This shot happened when I got an opportunity to do a "team photo" with Will Ferrell. By taking several shots in a particular way, I was able to composite them into one of those kickass, old-style, super-wide group photos. And note that while this photo is in wide aspect, they don't have to be super wide. The same methods can be used to take high resolution images in more typical aspect ratios.

Do you have large group photo needs? Let me know! I'm happy to shoot a hi-res composite for your group or company.