School Photo-shooting - Part 1
All parent love nice pictures of their amazing kids. That’s why schools usually offer an official photoshoot every year. Our school is no different. And I was honoured to be the photographer for this year!
That was my dream! I love taking portraits. Especially of kids - they are so open minded (and also cute). But, I’m outdoor photographer. I’ve never taken indoor portraits. There were some challenges…
Challenge 1 - Light for a group picture
I don’t own any lights! I never use lights. I usually take pictures outside and sometimes (rarely) I use a reflector. But you can’t use a reflector for a large group, that doesn’t work, right? What to do?
I spent hours thinking how to resolve it. I bought some “cheap” constant lights to have some kind of a backup. I tested them and well, how to say it diplomatically, it was really bad. The colour was a bit too blue with a bit strange shades of green. The light was quite harsh even when going through two levels of diffusion - a soft box and some extra cloth inside. And it was not enough of the light at all.
Well, I have great lights for some small still life or product photography. But I couldn’t use them for the school group portrait.
Luckily, our school is a small school with very understanding and amazing staff - we agreed on a sunny day. That should give us the light that the camera needs. It was probably the only strategy that could work for an indoor group shot. The backup plan was to take the group shots outside. It was possible, but not preferred as it was kind of a tradition to take the pictures in the hall.
To be completely honest, I need to mention that I was actually offered to borrow flash lights for free for the session. The only, but massive, trouble was that I didn’t know how to use them 🙈 And there was no time and nobody to teach me. A bit embarrassing 😅
Challenge 2 - Background for individual portraits
I visited the school in advance to try to find a place with enough of light for individual portraits and nice background. The school is tiny. There was not much of a choice. We ended up agreeing that we could do that in a dining room - that’s where I wouldn’t distract anyone and there were enough of windows. The sun was shining in, but there were orange blinds that I could use. It actually gave skin a very nice tone.
We didn’t want to have pots, plates, shelfs or a sink at background, so I decided to invest into a backdrop. Because it was my first backdrop ever to buy, I was not sure what was important for me and I didn’t really have any budget for it - so I decided to buy something rather cheap again.
Yeah, counting both the cheap lights and the cheap backdrop, I already spent a bit more than earned. And that’s OK, I am going to use it for other work later.
The backdrop was nice white and grey with bokeh effect. It didn’t have a sleeve for a pole to hold it up, but that was easily fixed using a duck tape. The more serious problem was that when you just slightly squeezed the material in your fingers, it would never be straight again - until you ironed it. Well, that’s how I ended up buying a steam iron….
Action! Portraits
We started with individual portraits. I spent 30 minutes preparing everything; moving the tables on the side, lifting the backdrop up, ironing it with the steam and taping the blinds to the windows to close all the gaps that were creating stripes of light on the backdrop. Kids were popping in once a while to ask questions like “What is that?'“, “Is the steam hot?“ or “Where is your camera?” and they helped me with the screws of the backdrop holder.
I brought my daughter’s white Ikea rocking chair with me and a little grey and extremely soft and fluffy rug. We used the chair for individual portraits - kids loved rocking on it. I only had to ask them to rock a bit slower once a while so that they didn't look like a Flash cartoon character on the pictures.
The rug was great for siblings - they were often very different heights and seating them on the carpet allowed me to fit both of them in the frame easily.
For all the portraits, I placed a giant golden reflector across from the windows - to compensate the shadows.I leaned it on a chair and secured it with a water bottle.
I used f/1.8 focusing on the nearest eye to keep the pictures very soft with a sharp eye. I set ISO to 100 or 200 and shutter speed 1/500s. The high shutter speed was very useful for the kids who were very active. I changed the f-stop to f/4 for siblings to make sure that both of them had eyes in focus on the pictures. Next time, I may go for f/2 because sometimes the other eye was a bit more out of focus than I’d prefer.
Action! Group Photo
I was lucky that when the time came for a group shot, it was really nice and sunny outside. The light was coming into the hall, nicely diffused. Yet, it was not too much of it. A bit less than I’d prefer.
I set the camera up to ISO 640, 24mm (the hall is tiny), f/9 (to be absolutely sure that everyone will be sharp). That gave me shutter speed of 1/13s. Not fast enough. But I was not panicking - I had my strategy:
I set the camera to take 9 pictures in a row (the pace was about 2 pictures for a second). Then I instructed everyone to smile and ideally not to move. That was quite amusing for most of them - can you imagine kindergarten kinds to stop moving? The result was that during these 4-5 seconds when the camera was shooting, everyone smiled, laughed, looked away, looked back and most of kids also managed to jump couple of times of kick their legs up. And that was exactly what I was hoping for.
