ISO 200 35mm lens 1/100th of a second f/10 studio lighting conditions; All shot as RAW images
What is the easiest way to photograph 5 children all under 10 for a group portrait, without pulling your hair out?
Quick answer: Don't do it! Hire someone. ;-)
This is what I spent my New Years Day 2015 working on.
Anyone who has tried to take a group portrait of kids together in a formal setting will know that even on the best day it isn't easy. Either they are arguing about something, fighting with one another or no one wants to cooperate, and you can't reason with them, they're kids! However, if you can get them alone they tend to be really interested in what is going on and want to help.
So what I decided to do was to take individual portraits of each child shot against a white backdrop, making sure that I used the same lens, and settings, to take each shot. The tripod was set at the same level. I changed their seating position on the chair to get the right angles when processing later.
Once all the images were taken, I cut the white backdrop out so that when I added the colored background it would look like they were all together when the picture was taken. Essentially this is a collage of 5 independent images, imposed on top of a sixth photograph (which was taken 4 days before).
Six images taken on two separate days in different places stitched together to form a single portrait. It was a fun project and I got pretty good results for my first time attempting it.