family portrait posing

[akimartymar]

I doing some family portrait for a family of 3 tomorrow morning. I've never done 2 adults with a child before. What are some tips for posing? Also, I usually do portraits of individuals and a very shallow DOF is no problem. This of course changes when you add in 2 extra heads that need to be sharp. I want to keep the background OOF so I will still be using a small aperture #. I'm not quite sure about posing 3 people where their heads are pretty much on the same plane while still making it look natural and beautiful.

[CaptainTom]

Indoors or out ? If indoors, keep the background plain and don't worry about it being too OOF. Outdoors, keep the subjects farther away from the background so the plane of focus will take in all the subjects. Shooting adults who will sit still is a whole lot easier than shooting any youngster. The kids will move, the adults will watch the kids and not the camera. Do you have an assistant? Highly recommended. Use a smaller aperture than you would with just two adults. There's nothing worse than having two in the photo in focus and one that is soft.

If the background is too sharp for your tastes, use PS and some gausian blur.

[akimartymar]

It's at their house and I think they want some inside and some outside. I guess I could do the PS gaussian blut trick but I've never had that look quite as natural and good as the real thing.

[LadyShutterBug]

This of course changes when you add in 2 extra heads that need to be sharp. I want to keep the background OOF so I will still be using a small aperture #. I'm not quite sure about posing 3 people where their heads are pretty much on the same plane while still making it look natural and beautiful.

you don't have to worry quite as much about depth of field w/ faces if you use a zoom and back up from them a bit. the distance between the people and the background (if it's natural) will create a shallow-feeling, but hte people are close together enough that you don't lose your sharpness on their faces... even if they aren't in the same plane.

[Michelle Allmon]

Use a zoom, how old is the child? I can give you lots of poses.