Faking The Corporate Team Photo
Sometimes, the hardest part of doing a corporate team photo is getting the team together! What if you didn’t have to? What if you could “fake” the corporate team photo?
And, even better, when someone new joins, or someone leaves, you don’t have to start all over?
This team photo is actually made up of eleven individual portraits done over the course of a morning on location in Waltham.
Blink and You Missed It
To pull all of these people together for one group shot would have been next to impossible. These are busy people with deadlines, conference calls, meetings, travel schedules, and a whole bunch of other reasons why they can’t be in the room at the same time.
Even if we could get them in one place, someone is looking the wrong way or blinking or doesn’t like their smile.
My overly simplified equation is that we need approximately 20 frames per person to get one that has the right expression on everyone at the same time.
So, for 2 people, 40 frames. 3 people requires at least 60 frames. And, so on. For the 11 people in this photo, we would have needed at least 220 frames to get one that might have everyone looking natural.
No one wants to sit still for that. Not even me.
Let’s apply a little technology and strategy to get the best images of everyone, in one photo! Let’s fake the corporate team photo and save your team some headaches.
I have used this technique with several clients to create group and team photographs without having to juggle expensive schedules or risk compromising one person to make sure we get a good shot of another.
We set up and photograph everyone separately, but as if they were all together in one place. Then, we put the best of each one together in one image.
Like anything, it does take some prep work and a fair bit of post production. But, the results are an extremely flexible group portrait that can include any number of team members.
Team Benefits from a Faked Group Photo
Another great benefit is that a change in staffing doesn’t mean a whole reshoot.
If someone leaves, we can pull them out of the image. If a new person is hired, we just need to create that one image.
Which is why we keep track of our lighting recipes so we can easily replicate the look and feel of the other people on another day.
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