GROUP SHOOT

Looking at the images from the group lighting test shoot it became evident that the two main power lights were positioned too far to the sides and were creating images where the sides of the faces were too bright and the center of the face was often darker. This created a slightly unbalanced feel to the images. To overcome this for the final group shoot I chose to position the two main lights closer together either side of the camera so their light fall was more overlapping and even. By using the same theatre stage for the shoot I knew the background would remain in darkness so I was able to focus on exposing the subjects and ignoring the background. I still used two small lights positioned wide on the extremes of the frame to act as key lights specifically to pick up on hair that would otherwise be lost in the shadows.

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During the planning of this shot I had to take into account the fact that the image would be shot in sections rather than as one large image and the composition would rely upon my being able to overlap images and compost the single image. The main reason for shooting this in sections was to enable me to position the camera closer to the subject and avoid any lens distortion at the edges that would be an issue fi we tried to shoot it as one mass group. I was also aware that I may not have enough lights to do this properly and flood the entire group properly while maintaining control. 

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The image below is a first visualisation of the final image which is designed to prove that the process will work. Obviously there are several people who appear more than once in the visual, however they naturally, wont be in the final image. 

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Prior to being brought together in Photoshop to join into one composition each part of the image is individually edited and upscaled in resolution so as to make as large and sharp as possible. While this will result in a very large file size it will enable the image to be reproduced on a very large scale without there being too much degradation of image.

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I also reduced the visual noise on the images caused by the ISO being set at 800. While this is not considered a high speed setting it still becomes an issue if the image is to be produced on a large scale.

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In conclusion, i think this shoot was a tremendous success,