Picture This

Picture This!
Group Portraits

Shutterbug Staff  |  Feb 1, 2004

Picture This!

Group Portraits

Our Picture This! assignment this month was group portraits, and readers responded with a wide variety of groups of family, friends, and social gatherings. The fascinating things about group portraits are the way in which groups are posed, which tells much about the social order, and the range of expressions you can see when more than a few people stand before the camera. The group is together for that one moment, but immediately after the shutter is snapped return to their individual lives, hopes, and dreams. But for that brief moment in time they are bonded by the image, and look into the photographer's camera as one thought, one set of lives projecting themselves together into the future.


Dance Team: Mike Ross made this classic pose of the Hanford High School Dance Team with his Olympus E-20N with an exposure of 1/60 sec at f/5.6 at 35mm focal length. He used his Novatron flash to provide full illumination of the group, from front to back.
© 2003, Mike Ross, All Rights Reserved


Theater Group: Using his Bronica ETRS with a 75mm lens loaded with T-Max 100 black and white film, Scott H. Reboul worked with three Vivitar 283s for his lighting at the Oconee Community Theater in Seneca, South Carolina.
© 2003, Scott H. Reboul, All Rights Reserved


Children In Puerto Rico: Setting up to photograph this fountain, Eugene Morgan was approached by a "couple of kids who asked if I would take a picture of them. When I looked through the viewfinder I was astonished to see that the group had grown considerably." A great story and a great shot, made by Morgan with his Nikon Coolpix 5700.
© 2003, Eugene Morgan, All Rights Reserved


Teddy Bears: These Teddy bears were created by Vermont Teddy bear artist Donna Bjerke. This group in the photographer's collection portrait held their pose through the entire session. Kevin C. Higgins worked with his Nikon N80 and Tamron 28-75mm lens and exposed on Fuji Reala ISO 100 film. He illuminated the scene with two Nikon SB80DX speedlights shot through two 30" Photoflex umbrellas.
© 2003, Kevin C. Higgins, All Rights Reserved



Northwest Girls: Joe Duty caught all the energy and exuberance of this group using his Nikon D1X and 28-70mm lens with an exposure of f/4 at 1/60 sec with the Nikon set at ISO 640.
© 2003, Joe Duty, All Rights Reserved


Family Reunion: Over the years, photographs such as this become even more meaningful and precious. Dick Pearce (who sits in the lower left in
a gray T-shirt) used his Olympus E-20N with a bounce and fill flash for
the shot.
© 2003, Dick Pearce, All Rights Reserved



Chillin': Ready for the slopes, this group was just heading for the lifts. Richard Crawford photographed them with his Canon Elan 7 and 85mm lens. His exposure was f/8 at 1/125 sec on Kodak Gold 200, which he printed in black and white.
© 2003, Richard Crawford, All Rights Reserved


Four Generations: It's a wonderful blessing to have four generations together, a memory that a photograph can hold. Malina Pitchford made this photograph on Mother's Day 2002 with a Canon EOS Rebel 2000 and Canon EF 28-200mm lens on Kodak High Definition print film.
© 2003, Malina Pitchford, All Rights Reserved


Tougher To Pose: Bill Lingard wrote: "Family reunions at the Lingard house also bring together family owned basset hounds with the inevitable request to `get a group portrait of the dogs,' all of whom are dog obedience school dropouts." He worked with a Pentax 6x7 II and 105mm lens and exposed on Kodak Portra 160NC at 1/125 sec at f/8.
© 2003, Bill Lingard, All Rights Reserved


Tough To Pose: No doubt about it, kids don't often play along when you're trying to get them to strike a pose. Heidi Morton found this out when photographing her nephew's first soccer game with a Nikon D100 at f/8 at 1/60 sec, but she told us the "day was truly entertaining anyway."
© 2003, Heidi Morton, All Rights Reserved

This photo was made using a 20mm lens on a Nikon FM2. The flagpole was a good 50 ft high, but I just managed to include Old Glory by tipping the lens way up and taking advantage of the incredible field of view of the lens. Note how the pole and buildings bend in unlikely ways--a bit of distortion that is the price for such a point of view and wide lens.
© 2003, George Schaub, All Rights Reserved

Picture This! - Our Next Assignment

Super Wide
When you photograph with 35mm lenses, including and wider than 24mm, you are in super-wide territory, the place where you begin to see at the edges of, or beyond, your normal peripheral vision. Aside from including what our eyes do not see within a scene, these lenses provide incredible potential depth of field, with some 24mm and 20mm lenses yielding an incredible 1 ft to infinity depth of field. They also have a tendency to distort edges, making them bow or bend, and to foreshorten subjects close at hand, yielding some amazing visual surprises. Combine it all and you have an incredible optical feast. So get out your super wide, mount it on your camera and show us what you see through the viewfinder.

Please Read This
It is important that you read and follow these guidelines. We need to follow this procedure because of the large volume of images we receive.
1) Images sent to us cannot be returned. You retain complete copyright over the
images, but do grant us permission to print your image(s) in the magazine and on our
web site, www.shutterbug.net
2) Because images are not returned please send a quality print or duplicate transparency. We will not accept or view images on CD, ZIP, or any other electronic media.
3) Images will be selected on the basis of content and technical quality. Please mark your outer envelope with the topic of the month (for example, "Wide View").
4) Enclose a short caption with the image stating camera, lens, film and exposure, plus location. If you are submitting an image with a recognizable person we must have a model release or signed permission from that person to reproduce their image in the magazine and on the web site.

Send your image and information to:
Picture This! Shutterbug Magazine,
1419 Chaffee Dr. Suite #1, Titusville, FL 32780.
Deadline for submission: March 15, 2004.
Images will appear in our June 2004 issue.
Our next topic: Vanishing Points
Deadline: April 15, 2004. Publication Date: July, 2004

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