Need some advice from those of you that take beautiful pictures

[Moesha]

I like taking pictures, but do so only for my own benefit mostly. Today a friend of mine asked me if I would be willing to take some pictures for her at her parents 50th anniversary gathering. She is going to have a guest book that has places for pictures on the pages in addition to areas for guests to write comments. She wants pictures of the people that write the comments on each page. She said she would like them in black and white. The plan is to take them using Kodak TMAXX real black and white film and using her Canon EOS Rebel. And since it will be film rather than digital, I'll take a couple of pictures of each group or person to increase the chances of getting a "keeper". We're thinking that maybe we'll take the book around and get the pictures at the same time as they sign it. I don't really like the idea of a book full of pictures of people sitting behind a table though. I've thought of maybe having an area in the corner somewhere to take some photos. Or maybe outside. Or maybe a combination of all the above.

So here where your advice comes in.
Give me some ideas and things to keep in mind when I'm doing this please. I know there are some fabulous photographers on here!

[Taz_Zoee]

Sorry, I don't have any advice. But I thought I'd post to give this a gentle bump.
Good luck with the photo shoot.

[Karen]

You should give each group the option where and how they want it!

For those who look at you numbly, with no ideas, you can have a couple spots already picked out that have nice-looking background, give them the option of doing a traditional shot where some people are sitting in chairs and others standing behind them, etc.

Having a little variety will make the end result more fun. And definitely take two shots of each pose, as that way, if someone is blinking in one, they might not be in the other.

Be wary of people with glasses - glare can happen. Give them the choice of glasses of or on. Some, like me, will prefer to keep them on, (no one would recognize me sans glasses, anyway) but it's nice to give them a choice!

[Moesha]

Well, the party was yesterday. It was a small building without many places for pictures. I took the family ones outside. Some of the others I had the couples stand together. During dinner I went around and took many couple shots. I just told them to pretend that they were on a cruise. I got some interesting poses using that tactic. It was the only thing I could think of to make disturbing their eating for a photo acceptable. I managed to get at least one picture of everyone there except for one man. He is single now and I didn't want to make him feel awkward taking his picture by himself during dinner. I was grouping some of the other single woman or children for photos. I didn't just go down a table and start taking pictures either. I was very random. I would have taken this man's picture with a group later, but he left before I got a chance. I was at my last picture and had one of everyone left, except for myself! So I found a couple of my friends and had someone take the last picture. It's film, so I still don't know how they turned out. We seemed to do well enough with film for this long, so surely there are some keepers in there.