Shot a pretty cool outdoor photo session the other day for the excellent local Cleveland area wedding band Follow the Sun. One of the ideas from the band was a collage type box layout with all the members in a cardboard box. My brain immediately referenced the old shows, Hollywood Squares and the Brady Bunch for those of you who remember. Along with this type of shot, they also wanted a handful of other more traditional group shots.
I suggested one of our local towns with a few key locations where I thought we could get a variety of looks & we went for it.
I was shadowed by Kariann, an upcoming local photog for this shoot and I hope that she had a blast and learned a few things. She was such a doll and it was my pleasure having her on the gig. She did a great job providing all the BTS imagery, lugging gear around and keeping my giant umbrella from blowing away into the street.
THE RED WALL
Here there was a red brick wall on a building in town that I miscalculated when there would be shade or hard direct sunlight. I was going for shade but had brutalizing hard light instead. Not what I wanted but took a shot at it anyway. Ran through a variety of poses here switching between the Sigma Art 50mm and the 28mm. A set up close against the wall and another about 6 feet off the wall. With no other lights other than the sun, contrasty I knew I was going to get. This did work out pretty well considering that the band was in their formal wedding outfits of a stark black and white for this segment. The black & white image processing definitely was the winner of the scene.
One of those shots was completely ruined by a rando pedestrian crossing with the group. Serious Yoko vibes.
THE BEATLES 'WALK'
There was a certain crosswalk in town that looked best to generically replicate this iconic crossing. The logistics of it were a bit dicey as I had to stand in the middle of the busy road to get it. Fortunately there was a small hatched off area in the middle that gave me a little peninsula to shoot from. I believe I used the 50mm for this one and shot wide open at aperture f/1.4. I also slipped on a variable ND filter for this as I wanted a narrow focus field and being in the open sun, my shutter speed was capping out. After 3 or 4 crossings, we got the shot. One of those shots was completely ruined by a rando pedestrian crossing with the group. Serious Yoko vibes. One of the band members went full-McCartney in replication by going barefoot and carrying a smoke. Pretty cool.
THE GAZEBO
This was a casual set full of fun group shots and candids with a few double breakouts. The group switched over to their casual attire and rounded up their goofier sides. Here I used the 86" parabolic umbrella & a strobe maybe 15 feet away from the group and used the 28mm at around f/2.8. There was a hot take inspiration from the earlier Beatles walk crossing crasher that the girls implemented in this set. While shooting some of just the rhythm section, the vocals came waltzing in the action shot well equipped with some party crashing antics. It made for some real fun imagery.
THE BOX
I had a good idea on how I wanted to shoot this before we started. Lock everything down. Consistency was key to help this not be more work than it needed to be in post editing. Using the same giant umbrella and the 50mm, dial in my light perfectly and not touch it again. Lock the frame down on a tripod with my Sirui A-10R ballhead. All camera setting's unchanged throughout. The cardboard box that the band brought was on the smaller side so it was a bit of a challenge keeping it perfectly square while going through all 6 members. To minimize post-edit squaring I wanted to keep things as perpendicular as I could now rather than working on fixing it later. Those who weren't in the shot did a fair job helping me keep the box plumb. Things got a little out of control when the band's big boy squeezed in the box pushing the ability to naturally square it up. Also there were some crazy attempts to fit folded up people in there too. All fun stuff.
We went with a 3x3 layout and the band's logo in the middle box. This collage is definitely labor intensive post work. It's one picture but comprises 9 images that are all individually processed then flatted and then re-edited as a whole. So getting the order figured out right away will help speed the process up without having to tear everything apart and start over if there's a change in order. The end result is worth the work though and there are many ways to make it creative and fun.