HUGE Family Picture

[wejustin]

Hey everyone, this is my own family. I took some pictures and then jumped in the picture and had my brother take some pictures. I spliced ten pictures together to get what you see here. There is a linear vignette to the top and bottom and I ran a high pass filter over the people. I am going to be printing many large prints for my family. I am interested in critiques that I can do post production to make it better before I print them. Things like white balance, coloring, contrast, brightness, etc. I had a lot of empty grass at the bottom so I added the text. If you have a better ideas for the text or something else, I am open to suggestions on that also.

Thanks for looking.

f/ 4.5
1/80 sec
ISO 200
41 mm
Canon T2i

[Weird Girl]

at this size of picture, looks great to me!! That IS a HUGE family! Nice job

[wejustin]

Thanks, they all live within about a mile of me. Very close knit family. They were sitting on a slope and so the people on the right are further from me than the people on the left. Thus, they look a little smaller. Not sure if I can fix that but you may not even notice unless I tell you.

[ccting]

a)inverse triangle?

b)How do we connect them ..?

c)clothes - color, tone & pattern?

d)camera level & plane..?

e)I see side lighting at the background. If I am you, I will try the one light source lighting, but light blocking might be high and the arrangement may be difficult...perhaps 45 degree to side light source. I am not sure hot to have diffuse reflection on the other side..or just fill flash ?????

f)Horizon at nearly center, and the grass kind of pattern. If I am you, I might reduce the grass portion to minimum, but it will conflict with the camera level & plane.. For this I am a bit conflict.

g)And, the linear arrangement of z-axis looks a bit hurt for me for DOF & space. I might want to arrange them so that everyone of them is about the same distance from my lens, making a C curve around the lens

h) Should the gentlemen sit down while the ladies stand at the back? Their level of eyes looks too much gap. However, it might conflict with the culture. :|. OR should the families grouped together?

i) 3rd level should be arranged based on height.

j) Could they be closer to each other?

No worry about this comments. I am just a noob and need some advice too as I am going to take my family portrait of 18 ppl. I know it will be extremely hard...

[KimberlyH]

I think you did a fantastic job considering how large a group you are working with. It's always to hard to get that sharp image with a large group and you did a great job doing just that. As for the slant...sometimes you just have to work with what you are given. I imagine it would have been difficult to find the "perfect" spot to have avoided this due to the size of the group. You should be proud of your work on this.

[Ambrosia76]

It looks good to me considering the size of the group the only thing that bothers me is a few on the white shirts look blown out and they draw your eye away from the other people.

[ccting]

Originally Posted by KimberlyH

. I imagine it would have been difficult to find the "perfect" spot to have avoided this due to the size of the group..

Any tip to get prefect shot?

[wejustin]

Thanks for all the great feedback. The location was bad in all regards. There is a lot of incline here and the camera was well below the people. I agree with the blown out white shirts, I am going to see what I can do to bring them back. The height is also a good comment. They are grouped by individual families and the right side is definitely shorter than the left. That is so funny because we always make fun of the short family members! haha. Oh well, too late for that.

[GrandmaBev]

I think you did a great job on the picture, but I don't like the "can be" words. Maybe just do Families......Together Forever.

Bev

[wejustin]

Thanks Bev, that is a good suggestion. I also thought maybe "Families are Forever"?