Lee Greatorex

Hey all. I’m still alive! 

I’ve been pretty busy at work doing various things. Namely recently taking everyone’s photo with the best VFX Oscar (we won!). I just wanted to talk a little about the setups for this in regards to photography (photos are done and edited but I want the people that spent their hard time working on the movie to enjoy them first).

A large number of people in the London area were part of creating the awesome Visual Effects seen in The Jungle Book, many no longer working for our company. Ensuring everyone that wanted a photo could get one required planning over 2 days with 2 separate setups. I also had 2 separate camera bodies from 2 different manufacturers (my personal aps-c Nikon dslr and our work Canon 5dmk3 I use for well, work). My thinking behind this was to have the 24-70 2.8 on the Canon and use my Nikon with a 70-200 2.8 to get some nice close up portraits.

Let’s take a look at the setups below for the days:

Setup 1: 
This would be an internal setup, allowing for both departments and individuals to take photos. We’d host it in a larger area to allow for large departments to get group shots. We have a large number of departments so group sessions were split in 15-30 minute intervals with individuals able to come along at any time (the idea is if they are coming as a department they can get individuals while the group is waiting for all it’s members). 

This was a bit of a hectic day, as the queues got bigger in between it was roughly about 20-30 seconds per person (plenty of time for a few good shots). The challenge mostly came from organising groups as the space, though large was still not quite big enough for the larger groups (it was easy to see railings above and the wider you got the more the other light sources would interfere with the shot).

Challenges

The unforeseen challenge I found was at editing time for the first batch I only had the card reader with me to read SD, therefor I was editing the Nikon Raw files without reference to the other camera. This would be fine right if the white balance matched? The colour renditions are too different to sadly do this. I noticed the day after my first batch of editing the Nikon can sometimes overpower with greens or magenta (depending on what you’re shooting) and even though they looked fine, they looked quite unbalanced when compared to the Canon shots). 

What was interesting while editing was to see the white balance slowly requiring tweaking to be cooler as it went on through the day, perhaps the lights outside were dimming and so artificial light was starting to creep in to the shot further. I found the Nikon needed more constant tweaking however kept up with the Canon (no x vs y battles here: I use Canon Nikon and Fuji depending on the situation or what I have with me at the time)

After edit total photos for the day - 846

Setup 2:
This would be downstairs in reception under close eye of security with some restrictions (naturally due to the security risk) and would be a mix of individuals no longer working for the company (but worked on the show) and anyone that missed their photo the day before.

As largely individuals the person communicating with the alumni would put them in to 5 minute slots, with 2 people per every 5 minutes (in theory). Any others then could fit in at any time in between. We’d have a lunch rush expected around 1pm-2pm (which we dealt with) but otherwise that should be quite smooth.

Challenges

As this was downstairs we had to keep things moving with this, yet naturally people may wanted to stay to re-connect with older colleagues. It was quite hard to keep the people moving but we got through everyone in the end with plenty of photos taken for each. There were also restrictions to handling (for security reasons) which naturally don’t go over great with people that put their hard time in to the work. Everyone handled this incredibly though and to be honest the backdrop and ‘set’ we created really helped. I personally preferred this location as it matched the grandeur feel to the Oscar (I liked photos from both days mind!)

My main challenge for this was simply taking too many photos. My typical job as a photographer is taking x number of photos and maybe selecting 2-3 in total per person to choose from. This time I did the silly thing of saying ‘I’ll just edit all aside from blurred/ closed eye shots and then you can choose your own!). I had mispredicted the count of shots forgetting I was doubling up almost using 2 cameras. This day I shot 1879 photos (ouch).

After Edit total photos for the day - 1439

We did have an insane number of people coming for photos in this case and it was a one off so I wanted to ensure we had the photos captured for everyone based on the effort they put in to the film. This is more than I would usually take for a wedding (and wanting to get it done before work this week I finished editing them all Sunday evening). The pace to this was pretty intense but do-able. 

Advice

If you have a large shoot, maybe you want to do a project where you take 100 portraits in 100 minutes or do large event portraiture so here are some of my tips:

• Plan ahead. Make sure you know your rough count, add more to it and keep to a time schedule. This is beneficial to both you, and the people you’re taking photos of
• 2 camera bodies save a lot of time rather than switching lenses, however a 24-70 should cover you in most situations if you only have 1
  
• If people are in groups but only 1 person is being photographed, tell the people around to take their phone pictures first. People have a bad habit of taking photos with the phone whilst you are taking photos (this distracts them and you’ll lose eye contact). <– most photos are lost like this nowadays. Surprisingly the phone and selfie culture have helped people to learn to post more!
• Make sure you eat and drink throughout. These are more a test of stamina and endurance than creative prowess
• Don’t take too many photos if you can help it. If using a 2 camera setup 2-3 for each camera should be enough
• When editing if using 2 cameras make 2 separate lightroom presets (for both cameras) and also copy the preset of the camera you took the most photos on. You can then paste information without needing to click (and if you’ve set your lightroom up correctly, you can apply that preset to all images you select). This will speed up your cropping and tweaking time
• Have fun! You’re doing this as you love photography, it may seem gruelling but you’re doing part of what you love. You should take pride in the fact you’re doing this task and the photos (and people you’re photographing) should reflect this. Keeping a pleasant demeanour goes a long way to ensuring people relax and smile
• Don’t be afraid to point to the lens. If you have lights on people can often not see you. You may also find if you’re taking photos for them on their phone, they may miss the phone camera lens. Help them out, it will improve their (and your!) photos

I hope this helps anyway! I’ll share some of the photos from both days later in the week.