Another typical part of a wedding shoot involves group shots. These will often start with everybody assembled and then move through various family shots. They provide a valuable record to the couple of who was there on the day. They also serve as a memory of years to come as older members of the family pass away.

Ensuring that you captured everybody in the most efficient way is important. I will therefore ensure that I receive a shortlist from the couple. I will ask them to organise a family wrangler. They ensure that everybody is in the right place.

You generally work from the largest numbers first and then work down.

Because you were dealing with large numbers of people these shots are best done under natural light.  That had been the original plan. We had identified a location outside of the church that would have been perfect. However as I’ve mentioned in previous posts the weather on the day did not play ball.

We were therefore forced to shoot all of the group shots at the back of the church. This is less than ideal circus situation especially with the lighting but there was nothing else we could do. Plus there is an old newspaper saying that any photo is better than no photo. 

The group shots were mainly taken on my GI as I have the equivalent of a 14mm wide angle lens. The church pews presented a slight challenge. However, I overcame this using the Remove tool in Photoshop. With good organisation and planning we managed to get through the groups fairly quickly and produced images that a couple liked