How to take a good group photo - Part 2 - Roll Call!

With our most recent group photo in the can, the hard work was about to begin. I started by removing excess shadow from a few faces, using a Bloom tool in GIMP to increase brightness in a small controlled area. With the light balanced, I handed the image file over to Pierre to fix it to his liking.

The first thing he did was remove the background with a cloning tool. You can see my poor first attempt near the center of the photo above. Pierre has a better hand at this than I.

Yay, less for me to do.

He then cropped the image to create a panoramic type photo. Then he turned it black and white. This made it much easier to add in photos of members that missed the shoot.

The most time spent was using an edging tool to cut their photos out and layer them into the image then sizing the faces and balancing exposure to match. Pierre's job. Poor him.

A new year and changes! Members come and go, so Pete needed to redo the photo to include everyone.

Yay, more for me to do.

I was now volunteered to take individual photos to be shopped into the group photo.

With a lot of help from Pierre, I brought my camera to choir, set up one light to match the light angle in the photo and with camera on tripod, got all the individual portraits done in a few minutes. Organization!

Once Pete sent me the final image, I added a glow and some contrast to make all the blacks blend together. Done. Finally.

Never. Again.

Please DONATE to make our 40th year special for everyone!

PART 1 HOW TO TAKE A GOOD GROUP PHOTO  - Some basics of group photography

PART 3 - HERE COMES THE SUN -- Taking the group shot outdoors with natural light.