How do I photograph a group so everyone looks good?

Group photographs fail in three specific ways — someone blinked, the back row is out of focus, and half the faces are in shadow. All three are solvable before you press anything.

Step by step

1. Find even light first.Open shade — the shadow side of a building, under a tree canopy, an overcast day — lights everyone the same. Direct sun means squinting and hard shadows across faces, and dappled light through leaves puts bright patches on some people and not others.
2. Put the light behind the camera.If there is a bright sky or a window, it should be behind you or above and behind, not behind the group. A group with a bright background is a group of silhouettes.
3. Compress the group in depth.Arrange people in a shallow arc curving slightly towards the camera rather than in deep rows. The less depth the group occupies, the easier it is to get everyone sharp and evenly lit.
4. Set the aperture for depth, not for blur.f/5.6 to f/8. A wide aperture that flatters a single portrait puts the back row visibly out of focus and it cannot be fixed afterwards.
5. Focus on the front row.Depth of field extends roughly twice as far behind the focus point as in front of it, so focusing on the front rank puts the rest of the group inside the sharp zone.
6. Keep the shutter speed up.1/250 or faster. In a group of a dozen, somebody is always moving, and a slow shutter in dim light guarantees at least one soft face.
7. Arrange heights deliberately.Stagger heads rather than lining them up level, put taller people at the back and towards the edges, sit children and shorter people at the front, and ask everyone to bring their heads slightly closer together than feels natural. Gaps between heads make a group look disconnected.
8. Shoot a burst, several times.Take six or more frames, then say something to make them react and take six more. Continuous drive costs nothing and gives you frames to combine if necessary.
9. Manage the eyes.Ask everyone to close their eyes and open them on three. It very reliably fixes the blink problem for a formal shot. Otherwise, expect to swap a face in from another frame in editing.
10. Check the frame edges before shooting.Someone half in, a shoulder cut off, a bin behind the group, a lamppost from a head. Leave a little space around the group for cropping and for the person who arrives late.

Tips

• Get up on a step, a chair or a wall. Photographing a large group slightly from above opens up the faces and stops the back row disappearing.
• Take the shot people expect first, so everyone relaxes, then take the one you actually want.
• In a wide group photograph, keep faces out of the extreme corners — wide lenses stretch anything near the edge of the frame.

Common mistakes

• Using a wide aperture for a group — The depth of field at f/2 is far shallower than the depth of a group, so one row is sharp and the others are not. It is the commonest single fault in group photographs.
• Positioning the group with the sun behind them — The camera meters for the bright background and the faces go dark. Move the group, or add fill flash.
• Taking one frame — The probability that nobody blinked, nobody looked away and nobody moved falls quickly with group size. Six frames is a minimum for ten people.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask