Susan Wilson Photography • gallery

sections: ChrisCole-Kahootz | Hsin-Yun Huang | Anita Diamant | Rebecca Strauss | Pete Seeger | Nancy Dimock & Joel Zavala | Triple Helix | cow dog Christmas | Max the Chef | Holly Near & Cris Williamson | Boston Women's Memorial | Rebecca Parris & Santa | Rebecca Strauss...Got Music | April James | Borromeo String Quartet | Hollywood Murphy | Revolutionary Characters | Bill Morrissey | Lorraine & Bennett Hammond |

Chris Cole / Kahootz

When shooting groups of four or more, it's vital the group agree that the vision of the WHOLE is more important than the INDIVIDUAL PARTS. In other words, if each person in the group wants it to be the best possible picture of him/her, and you have five or ten people wanting this, you're in deep trouble. There's an old story about how Fleetwood Mac, when doing the group photo for their album Rumours, kept having the photographer shoot and reshoot til each individual loved how they alone looked in the photo--and that the final tab was tens of thousands of dollars! The truth is that the shape, design, and mood of the image is far more important--and far more likely to grab viewers, potential clients, editors, and producers--than the facial expression of each person in that photo. In my humble opinion, this image of Chris Cole's band called Kahootz does it all. We also cheated a bit: it's actually two images combined by a digital artist. We had to do that, incidentally, since we don't have a huge studio with a cyclormama wall, enabling this many people to stand side by side against a single background.