Four generations of family members! And I photographed groups consisting of every possible combination of mini-groups too. The X family, the Y family, the ladies, the gentlemen, the 2nd generation, 3rd generation, first generation with 4th generation, oldest generations, cousins... It had been years since they'd all gotten together, so they were a good spirited lot.
There was limited shade in the back yard. I posed small groups in the shade. Larger groups I moved out of the shade, but dealt then with constantly changing partly cloudy skies. This means unfortunately, that there will be a lot of white balancing to fix in this set of photos.
As always with large groups of people standing in a row, there is a tendency to make an arc shape; ie, the people at the ends of the row are closer to the camera than those in the middle. Why does this happen? Do rows of people subconsciously tend towards a circular positioning? Do end people feel too far away from the camera/ central action?
I have to get the End People to "flatten out" and face forward (instead of being sideways) so that everyone is on the same plane. Sometimes it's easiest to lightly grab people's arms and direct them into position. If the row is not flattened out, the people on the ends look bigger than everyone else, and their faces are lit differently or they cast shade on adjacent people. Plus if the end person in a curved row is sleeveless, their arms will look huge, no matter the physique. Keep that in mind if you're ever an End Person. If you find yourself in such a situation and it seems awkward to suggest flattening, the best thing to do is to keep your arm away from your body - hand on hip perhaps.