Anatomy of a Family Photo

If you’ve ever tried to take a family group photo of more than 2 people, I’m sure you’ve run into this common problem: people simply don’t cooperate. And that can be for so many reasons! Maybe they’re little people and they don’t understand that they’re supposed to look at the camera & smile. Maybe they’re having a bad day & are grumpy. Maybe there are too many distractions calling for everyone’s attention. Whatever the case, whenever you get a group of people together & attempt to take a group photo, it’s rare to get everyone looking, with pleasant expressions on their faces, & all eyes open in the same shot!

And that’s where Photoshop comes in.

Ever wondered how we photographers magically get “the shot”? Kid-squirming-crazy-atmosphere and all? It’s not magic, just a little bit of Photoshop work – that’s all. And I thought this most recent Abbey family photo would be a fun demonstration. Ready for a little “behind-the-scenes”?

I’ll give you a disclaimer: if you’re the type of person who believes their family is always perfect & never in need of any type of Photoshop work, then quietly back away & forget that this post even exists. Feel free to continue on being an innocent bystander.
I think most people though expect (and even ask) for a little bit of Photoshop “help”. Everyone is simply so used to it. “You can Photoshop that, right?” is a common question I hear all the time!

So, on with the show! The last time we were altogether, Mom Abbey called for a family photo. Ellen was traveling with us, so bonus – we had a photographer to take the photo (usually it’s a tripod & remote shutter!) Here we are setting up – notice how thrilled Braelynn looks – she’s playing the role of the grumpy one in today’s example.

Ellen fired off 17 versions of the image below. And as you can imagine (this is a shocker, I know) not one was worthy of printing or even posting to Facebook.

So, in looking thru those 17 images, I found the one with the best “bones” – usually it’s the one with the least amount of “problems” and the most amount of happy smiling faces. Sometimes though, the image that gets picked as the “foundation” is picked simply because it’ll be the easiest to fix!

Obviously, we had some problems with the image I picked to fix up. Both Braelynn & Cameron weren’t looking, the group was off-centered, and the sky looks like it was about to rain. All in all, not a horrible photo, but not one I would want anyone to frame!

So, then I set out, like a pirate seeking treasure, to find images from those remaining 16 that have the pieces I need: in this case, I needed Cameron & Braelynn to be at least looking at the camera (hey, if they are under the age of 3, I settle for simply looking at the camera, pleasant expressions can come later)

Then I get to work swapping heads! Shh, it’s much less painful than it sounds. I did some other minor editing as well – I swapped the sky for something that looks a bit more pleasant, brightened everyone’s faces up, warmed up the image a bit and wa-la! So much better! And now definitely worthy of being printed, framed, and hung on a wall for display.