On Mon, June 22, 2009 11:32, Lea Murphy wrote: > The best advice I could give regarding posed formals is to place the > bride and groom, the full wedding party then take away from that > (rather than add to it). > > When you do family formals follow the same rule...set the bride and > groom then add the full family then remove people as they aren't needed. > > Formal photographs at weddings take nerves of steel but they sell so > be sure to do them. I strongly agree that they're important to nearly all families. I'm not so clear why they take nerves of steel, though. (However, I sub-contracted working out the list of formals needed for this weekend to one of the sisters of the bride, and also let her round people up for me. That worked pretty well. I know all the family well, though; I wouldn't assign that job to a person I didn't have good reason to think was up to it.) Checklists of standard formals are useful, but can't encompass the complexities of some of today's families. At the wedding this weekend, the bride's biological father was officiating, and she was walked in by her unofficial step-father. Her bio mother and the wife of her unofficial step-father were also in the wedding. The groom's side was simple and conventional. And, obviously, everybody gets along with each other; that's where things can get disastrous, if they don't. I find the hard bit getting everybody in the group focusing on looking good in the photo. I find a loud voice helps. And the fact that I can shoot more than three shots easily (digital vs. medium-format, back in the day); with only 24 shots on a 220 roll, one had to conserve somewhat; plus they cost money. One surprisingly easy drastic tactic -- in Photoshop, you can transplant heads between frames fairly easily (in a setup like a group shot, where nearly everything is about the same in each frame, so there aren't lighting and background issues). So if everybody looks good except one person, sometimes bringing that head over from a frame where they look good is your best option. I've also transplanted just eyes, to deal with an unfortunate blink in what's otherwise clearly the best frame; again, it's fairly easy, if you have the eyes you want open in another frame shot in the same location, lighting, background, lens and distance, etc. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
