Six people on a 9' white background?

[steve_singleton3]

An impending shoot calls for posing six people on a white background.

Since a 9' roll is all I can get, I'm thinking of making a 12'

background in two pieces, running the paper wide and then taping a

"floor" piece to it to make a cove about 3 or 4' up. Three questions

about this approach: 1. Is it an enormous amount of trouble to

eliminate the paper seams in Photoshop? 2. Can I get away with a

single background light behind the tightly-posed group or would two

lights from either side produce a better effect? 3. Is there a better

way to approach this? Any help will lower my stress level for the

holidays.

[maury_cohen]

If it's head and shoulders you may be able to get away with 9'.

[michaelging]

Steve, you should be able to photograph the people if you use a little longer lens, maybe something in the 105mm,135mm lens range. You do not say why you are photographing them , If its a family portrait ,try having some sit with the others behind them. The problem is that even numbers do not photograph as well as odd numbers. If its a waist up photo,try putting them in a V facing the camera and using a mid-tele stopped down would make a interesting photo. Good Luck

[michaelging]

As far as photoshop, you can easily clone out the seam on a white background.

[digitmstr]

I would NOT use two pieces of paper. Because the pieces will look different and that's not something you can *easily* edit in PS.

 

It's a lot easier and much faster to CLONE the parts that would be too narrow, if needed.

 

But, you may be able to fit them on the 9' easily. It all depends on the pose, your lens, the lenght of the studio.

[digitmstr]

Another problem would be that the papers is rolled the other way so, it wouldn't bend properly.

 

If I understand correctly you want to run the paper horizontally to 12' lenght or so and then, add another piec on the bottom. Essentially making an 18' (or less if you cut it) tall background with a width of 12'?

[streetlevel]

What I've done in the past... is shot the people then with the exact same camera and light settings shot just the background. Provided that they were far enough off the bg to keep the shadows from spilling off the edges when you shot originally, you can take the blank background shot and use that to add to the sides, or clone where needed.

[twmeyer]

Giampi is right, you DO NOT want to try to run paper sideways, it will crimp and catch light wrong and just be a royal pain in the ass. It's much easier to create a new white document the size you need, drag the group photo onto that new image and paint out whatever part of your group shot fell off the edge of the seamless.<p>I suggest some unconventional grouping that might let you get these people closer together. Shoot with a long lens from as far back as you can get, to keep the angle of view tight. Good luck... t

[wick beavers photographer]

make sure your background is white and take individual or groups in numbers that fit

comfortably in your frame/on your background. Comp the groups with Photoshop. This is

easier than you think- you don't even have to select the people off the background, just

closely cut/polygonal lasso them out and paste them on a pre-made exposure of your

background only. For simple pasting only, put tape on the floor so they're standing/posing in

the same place (distance to lens) for scale later. You can edit>tansform>scale them and the

background layer as large as you want and gaussian blur/luminosity mode the background

layer it if it gets too pixelated for you!

You can make a 9 ft wide seamless accommodate a group shot of 100 very wide people!