I’ve just completed a session of corporate photography for Outsourcing Malaysia‘s board of directors committee members and its secretariat members, in preparation for the launch of their annual report. These pictures will also be used in the relevant promotional materials and prospectus to introduce the faces behind this growing team of dedicated professionals.
It was supposed to be a simple two group shots setup. The first group would be the Committee Members of 12 to 15 people, while the smaller Secretariat Members would field a 7 to 9 member team.
The brief was to have each of these two pictures taken with some members seated while the rest standing behind. Both these pictures will then be eventually merged to have the conference tables joined somewhere at the middle (where the spine of the booklet is) to give the impression of a broad continuous curvy table in a double page spread.
Here’s the simple lighting setup for the day.
The picture above was taken from the subjects’ perspectives looking into the camera. 3 bare head monoblocks at about full power were rebuilding the entire ambient scene and tweaked to have the right balance of fill.and detail where needed. A final large soft box key light was slightly off camera axis to provide shape in the subjects’ face.
Because the wall at the rear of the subjects were pretty close to them, I have to adjust the lighting carefully to ensure shadows cast would be cancelled out properly in the cross-lighting setup employed. I had in mind to initially employ a Rembrandt-style lighting for more dramatic effect, but due to the close proximity of the wall which would invite shadows from this uni-directional lighting, I have to cross-light and cancel out the shadows.
The bare head monoblocks were bounced at a distance to the ceiling for maximum light source area and softness, which would lead to even softer shadows under the chin of the subjects. In the end, the entire lighting was reduced to a simple soft shadowy carving from a single top-down large light source (which was essentially the entire ceiling alone!). However, a somewhat shapely key effect was maintained and exerted by my close-to-axis large softbox key light.
Here are the unedited shots of the Secretariat Members, followed by the Committee Members.
Unfortunately, 2 from the first group above were absent followed by about 7 in the Committee Members. Hence, I had to photograph with some empty allocated space at the rear in preparation for their being photoshopped in! Of course, it’ll be easier to photoshop in a ghost as standing at the rear, than trying to edit a seated figure on an empty chair (i.e. multiple contact points and reflections).
Hence, all the members were aligned accordingly as either seated or standing to make an estimated guess of their adjacent or rear absent neighbours. To add salt to injury, of course, I wouldn’t be afforded the luxury of knowing before hand the actual height and body configurations of the missing members. I will have to re-shoot the members individually as full-body profile and skewed their height and sizes accordingly in post. The final size/height perception will have to be verified with the client for accurate representation.
It’s a very difficult and time consuming process but unfortunately this is the only way to go. This shoot has been postponed more than twice and we just have to make do with this method as getting everyone present (for such a large group) was just too monumental a task, in view of the member’s busy schedule.
While waiting for some members to arrive earlier during this corporate photography session, we killed spare time by taking some quick individual portrait grabs, utilising the existing group shot lighting setup without changing them. This afforded me flexibility and prevent me from resetting the lighting setup unnecessarily, as these individual shots were just an extra non-compulsory shots.