tmt group shot

Tropical Medical Training are celebrating their 10 year anniversary and wanted to mark the occasion with a group photo of their 21 staff – but not just any group photo, they wanted to get creative! We accepted their challenge. After trawling the web for inspiration, we decided on a relaxed and ‘candid’ studio shoot of the staff around a large table. Shooting 21 people in the studio isn’t something we do everyday and logistically it required a bit of thought…
To create this shot, we needed to divide the staff into 6 smaller groups, and shoot the smaller groups individually, later to be merged in Photoshop. While Photoshop has amazing capabilities, we still needed to make sure we captured as much as we could in camera to make the final result look as realistic as possible. We needed to consider things like marking the floor to keep the table in the correct line, considering what props were on the table and in people’s hands in each shot, as well as overall layout and linking of the smaller groups. With the help of the amazing Karen from Carbine Avenue styling, the shoot went off without a hitch and was lots of fun!
Congratulations on your ten year anniversary TMT!
Suz’ Photoshop notes: I would have loved to show screen grabs with the stages I went through from start to final image but it’s just so long it looks too tiny to make anything out!!! After selecting the ‘best’ images (everyone’s eyes open, laughing… but not too much, talking… but not too much) I then whisked them into Lightroom for some colour correcting and exposure fixing (standard procedures). The exported images then got layered into Photoshop, 6 individual layers with each group. I aligned the top of the table as close as possible and then started the decision making process of who’s arm was going to be infront, how close should one person be to the next group to look as natural as possible etc. etc. Layer masks, clipping paths and adjustment layers all played their part to blend the images together. Finishing touches were a little skin smoothing for the ladies and a little warmth to the whole image with a subtle photo filter.
End result, a very relaxed, happy looking, seamless group shot, happy client and happy Insight team with celebratory cups of tea.