A Pause - My Best Group Shot !!!

Well, I am posting this particular one because this is the best group shot I have clicked till date. Group photos is the one of the most common types of digital photographs. They happen everywhere from weddings, to camps, to parties, to sporting teams, to school etc.

There must be thousands of group photos taken each day around the world – however unfortunately many of the group photos that I see in my friendship group and on Flickr would leave their photographers disappointed with the results for a variety of reasons.

Common group photo mistakes and problems include:

• one or more subjects always seem to be looking away or in different directions (i.e. at different photographers)
• subjects blinking (there’s always one)
• someone being missing from the photo
• different moods in the group (some smiling, some serious, some playing up to the camera etc)
• the group being too far away or not all fitting into the shot.

These problems become more common when the group is large. I took this photo during Holi celebration at Magarpatta City of Pune where I reside and above mentioned all the problems were almost avoided in this photo.

I had a very good 2 hours in the morning when me and my friends had an awesome rain dance on some fantastic music. DJ was good and was putting some nice tracks. After having enough dance, I decided to come back to my place to carry a camera as I wanted to capture the essence of this beautiful day through my camera lens.

Venue was the ground beside the gymnasium and DJ was set on the terrace of the same building. So, that was the best vantage point to click the entire venue. I decided to climb on that terrace. After clicking few casual shots, I decided to click my best group shot ever. There were around 200 people who were dancing on the every bit of music and everybody was lost. I asked DJ to pause a track just for a second. The moment DJ paused a track, everybody (all 200 people) started looking and screaming towards DJ, and they found me having my DSLR in the neck and focusing at them. They really thought that I was some media photographer, and everybody started screaming at me and I got my best group shot. This all happened within a couple of seconds and everybody was back to dance again.