One light group portrait

The other week I was asked by a PR agency that I've done several jobs for lately if I'd pop down to their offices to shoot a client they had coming in. There'd be 5 gents and, as well as individual portraits they wanted a group shot on a white background.

Not knowing exactly what to expect from a lighting perspective, I duly packed the kitchen sink into the car and headed off.  

On arrival, it was obvious there was no lovely clean white wall that I could use as a backdrop. Fortunately, I'd packed my  9 foot white seamless and support stands and found a spot in the middle of the office to set this up. I'd brought several lighting options with me, but I wanted to try and keep it as simple as possible. Envisioning 2 rows of subjects, I simply set up one Quadra with the largest of the Lastolite Ezyboxs and set this up about 12 feet from the background to try and provide an even light on all the men. I set the light up slightly off centre to avoid throwing my shadow into the mix. However, In the end we decided to put all 5 subjects side by side and the result is the image you see up top. 

I'm a firm believer in the ol' KISS adage (Keep It Simple Stupid) and the result is exactly what the client was looking for.