NTNU camera club. Nature photo workshop 1999

Coupons for Names of People

by Vadim Makarov for his Photo Pages

Besides film description forms, I carry in my camera bag a set of coupons for names of people in a group photograph. Immediately after the picture is taken, I say "Please don't move, we have to do one more thing" and hand out the coupons according to the position of people in the picture. Everybody writes down his/her name and returns the coupon.

Using coupons is a very little hassle comparing to your frustration when you are not able to identify or spell somebody's name later.

Coupon (old version)
Blank coupon

You can download this set of coupons: new version (MS Word 97, 174KB) | old version (MS Word 97, 207KB). Note that the Group Photo Nr. on all coupons is duplicated from the first coupon using Word advanced features. To replace it in the whole document, edit the blue letter on the first coupon, select the whole text (Ctrl+A) and then use the Update Field command (it should be in the context menu that pops up when you click the right mouse button on the selection). The coupons are numbered automatically as well.

The problem is that using these coupons is unrealistic with more than 20-30 persons in the picture. If you know how to collect and properly identify names of a larger number of people (e.g. 100 and more), I would appreciate your suggestions.

See also: The Ultimate Photo Shoot - how group photo of 189 World's Leaders was made. Reading this will give you the right spirit for taking group pictures.

Yet another thing I have in my camera bag is a pocket DOF chart.

Vadim Makarov
You may Add a comment | Add a link