group baseball picture

Can anyone help? How can I eliminate shadows on kids' faces in a group baseball picture? The hats worn by the

kids produce strong shadows making it hard to see kids' faces. The groups are usually around 13 kids.

Thanks to anyone that can give me advice!

Shoot when sun is lower in sky.

Use a hot-shoe flash, but off camera and holddown low to through some light upwards towards their faces. Get some white cloth- like a painters white drop cloth/plastic, lay on ground ifront of them to reflect some light upwards.

A few ideas.

 

Steve

I just ask the kids to slide their hats up so I can see their eyes. Simple but works... Also pay attention to where the sun is and adjust the group accordingly. Never face the team into the sun, unless you want squinted eyes! The sun never seams to be where you want it when it comes time to shoot a group photo! All else fails fill flash works great, altough I find if you play the sun right, you usually don't need it (except when the sun is low).

 

A few more ideas.

 

Eric

All those are good tips to solve the problem. I mainly have them tilt the hats back alittle to see the eyes and I over exposed the shot by 2/3s to a full fstop to bring out the details in the face.

i highly recommend using a fill flash. I use an on camera speed light. when you are using it as a fill flash it doesnt matter that its coming from the camera. It produced great results! i use the cameras pop up flash for the individual pictures and the speed light for the team pictures. Im telling you this is the way to go, ill try and add in a sample so you can see an example.<div></div>

The fill flash doesnt entirely eliminate the shadows as you can see as the flash isnt as bright as the sun, but it really tones them down. The pictures look more naturally then having the kids lift their hats or tilt their heads back. Also when you shoot entire leagues as i do, it isnt possilbe to shoot the teams when the sun is lower in the sky. i start a league at 8am and finish at 3pm, so the sun changes position quite a bit. With the fill flash it wont matter. you can choose a spot to shoot the teams and shoot all of them there without having to move with the sun. For instance i like to shoot the teams at home plate with the backstop behind them, as you can see in this picture the sun was right about over third base, but it doesnt matter. The flash also lets the camera capture the beautiful blue sky in the background, when if you dont use a flash and compensate the exposure, you get a washed out white sky. the blue sky looks nice to me. I have shot tons of teams in tons of different situations and locations, this always works.