Portrait | Wilmot Girls
Before winter arrives, time to take advantage of fall colors, and capture the friendship between these 4 housemates!
That’s right, we’re back in the Nichols Arboretum! The ‘Arb’ in Ann Arbor is such a treasure chest of great shooting locations, especially now that the fall season is accelerating. Last Friday was also my first visit since a couple during the summer and another last winter.
However this visit to the Arb was slightly different, as I had to shoot 4 girls as a group. These ‘Wilmot’ girls are current housemates and have spent a lot of time together during the past two years. Despite sharing all those experiences, one of them realized they didn’t have a decent photo of themselves as a group. And that’s how I — a male — crashed into the picture!
We set out a little late, so in total we shot for only about 75 minutes. That’s pretty short for a portrait session, especially a group one, and remember it’s already the second half of October and temperatures at night fall close to freezing temperatures. The girls had brought their winter coats, and shed them for quick snaps here and there. Between that, moving between locations, and scene set ups, there wasn’t much time left for actual shooting. Yet we ended up with 9 great final images which I’m quite proud of.
I realize groups bring a whole other level of complexity to poses. Now there’s four times the detail the look out for. Is the hair right? Where are the hands? Even I can’t catch everything. But I did do my homework and came up with poses and set-ups in my head before the shooting day. Some we managed to pull off, but others had to be canned because of the lack of shooting time and available light. In our last shot (the one with the wine party), it was so dark that I had to set up my new light stand with umbrella. First use in the field and it created good results. Soft and even lighting illuminated the three girls nicely.
Shooting group portraits are certainly more challenging than solo ones, but they can be more fun too as a higher level of dynamics are involved. I’ll just have to put more thought into poses the next time!
Enjoy the photos below and do leave comments!
[...] the photos in it revolve around Guo Lu, whom I did two portrait sessions with, one on her own and another with her house-mates. I ordered a 10×10 inch square album, with a burgundy leather cover. Unfortunately, WillowBook [...]