Just for the fun of it, this year I accepted the challenge to make a Christmas card for Ms.Reyna, our principal. It wasn’t something that phased me simply because I had done something very similar last year with my Photo II students last year at El Modena High.
In case you didn’t know, this is my first year at Jurupa Valley High.
Experience is a great teacher but only if the person undertaking the task is analytical and thinks about what not to do the next time.
What you will need:
- A tripod
- A huge cardboard box for your actors & stars
- Decorations depending on your theme (in my case, Christmas…)
- Photoshop
- A place where your setup to shoot won’t be moved or disturbed.
- A place where the light is consistent (no lighting? just shoot at the same time of the day)
It’s best to do the entire shoot the same day. I had to do mine over 2 days because school staff can’t always get away even for 10 mins.
I have a classroom which doubles as my photo studio so it is locked up and not disturbed.
Planning & Procedure
Needless to say, cohesiveness only comes through planning. Everyone needs to be on board meaning they should come dressed to match the theme.
The actual photography was quite painless once everyone had some idea of what they were supposed to do once they took their turn inside the cardboard box which I decorated with wrapping paper and ornaments.
Shooting tethered to a computer helps but is not necessary. Since I had an iMac in the studio, I just used Adobe Lightroom Classic to shoot tethered. This gave everyone a chance to see if they wanted to re-do their pictures. Always keep your customers happy!
Post Production
If you have access to Lightroom, Capture One or even Canon EOS Utility, it will make culling easier. I had 23 people in my project. So even if I took 4 pictures of each person, that would mean I had to look through and make my choices after looking through potentially close to 100 pictures.
After making my choices, I exported them into a folder. Then I launch Photoshop and let it do the heavy lifting.
Under the File menu> Automate > Contact Sheet II
Wait a minute… what about the white spaces between the individual picture? Well, you have to figure out some of this yourself.
Hint: create a new blank layer on the very top most layer in your layers palette.. Use the Brush tool and paint with black all the areas. Flatten and save the image as a jpeg. Before “Flattening” your PSD file, be sure to save it as a TIFF or a PSD so you can still move the people around in your grid.