Studio Portrait: Alverno Peer Leaders

Group headshot sessions bring their own set of challenges. There is the time constraint of spending only a few minutes with each subject as they rotate through; there’s the need to keep a consistent look and feel throughout all of the portraits; there’s the different skin-tones; there’s no time to get to know anything about each person. And with those challenges you still need to create quality portraits that the organization and the individuals will be happy with.

Alverno College’s Peer Leaders are incredible young women who serve as resources for new students. They help the new students feel welcomed on campus, give advice and insight on how to be a successful college student, and provide information about what resources or offices on campus can help them in various situations. When we were asked to create headshots for them, we eagerly accepted the opportunity!

Prior to the shoot, we had conversations with the staff members who oversee the Peer Leader program and settled on a general look for the shoot. Because all of the Peer Leaders (and the two staff supervisors) would be wearing their bright blue Peer Leader polo shirts, we decided on a black background so that the shirts would really stand out. With that decided, we then worked out a default lighting configuration.

The day of the shoot, we spent a little more time with the first subject to nail down the lighting configuration and then were able to move quickly through the rest of the group. In the end, we were able to create a consistent look and feel across all of the images and work around or through the challenges of a group shoot.

More information about the shoot and dealing with the challenges follows the photographs.

While the black background made the the shirts stand out as intended, we had to ensure that the women with darker hair did not fade into the background. We solved that problem with a 10” x 36” stripbox mounted on a boom overhead with a 400W monolight strobe, and a 24” x 36” softbox on a 750W monolight strobe positioned behind and to the left of the subjects. These two lighting instruments provided a rim light to separate the darker hair from the black background.

As a keylight, we had a 43” circular softbox 45 degrees to the right of the subjects as the keylight and a reflector disc just to the subjects’ left to fill in the shadows on the left side of their faces. To solve the problem of the different skin-tones, we took the test shots to set the light levels with a woman with lighter skin to make sure that we weren’t washing out her skin, and then moved the reflector in closer for the women with darker tones make sure that their features weren’t being lost in the shadows.

The final challenge, that I consider to be the greatest is that of having only a couple of minutes with each subject. For that reason, it was critical that we had the lighting solution planned ahead of time so that we wouldn’t be burning precious moments trying to figure out the lighting configuration for each subject. More importantly though, the reduced time with each subject means that there’s less opportunity to figure out the best camera angle, give them time to relax and overcome any nervousness, coach them through posing tips and techniques.

Overcoming the time challenge is a matter of experience and people skills and we pride ourselves on both. The calmness that comes from experience and knowing your equipment helps the subject to be calm as well. Being able to talk with them as an individual as they’re settling themselves in front of the camera helps them know that they’re not just another face in the line of people. Having the experience to quickly assess a subject’s face and decide on angles and poses helps speed the process of coaching each person through how to pose. Giving the general posing tips loud enough for everyone to hear but still focusing on the individual in front of the camera makes helps the group while still giving the current subject your full attention.

The result is a set of images that carry the same look and feel, while still being personal to each subject. It’s a matching set of unique, young leaders.