Environmental Portrait

The environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject's usual environment, for example their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject's life and surroundings. It says something about the subject within the framework of their own environment.

Why do I prefer environmental portraits?

• they give context to the subject you’re photographing
• they give points of interest to shots (something you need to watch as you don’t want to distract from your subject too much)
• they help your subject relax
• they often give the viewer of your shots real insight into the personality and lifestyle of your subject

These shots sit somewhere between the purposely posed shots of a studio portrait (they are posed and they are unmistakably ‘portraits’) and candid shots which capture people almost incidentally as they go through their daily life.

Two good rules of thumb when attempting to photograph people in their surroundings:

1. "Half of all location photography is moving furniture."

2. "'Available light' means any light that's available."

Both sayings have been attributed to the great location portraitist Arnold Newman. More importantly, each can help spell the difference between a good environmental portrait and a great one.

When making an environmental portrait, there should be a connection between the subject and where it’s photographed. When photographing animals, this is not a problem in that where it’s photographed is where it lives. It can be an issue if you’re into photographing bugs and you unknowingly place an insect on a plant that is poisonous to the species. With people it becomes more of an issue as the story as to why a person is photographed in a specific location needs to be logical. If the person and the setting conflict, chances are the image won’t work.

So lets turn our attention to some ‘how to’ tips on environmental portraits.

1.Know your subject

Find out where they spend their time, what the rhythm of their life is like and observing their personality. Out of this you’ll not only find appropriate locations but will begin to get a feel for the style of shots that might be appropriate and you’ll begin the process of helping your subject relax into the photo shoot.

2. Location

Sometimes a location chooses you but on other occasions you need to be quite deliberate and purposeful in making your choice. When choosing your environment you ideally want to get one that:

• says something about your subject
• adds interest to the shot - every element in an image can add or detract from your shots.
• doesn’t dominate the shot - Try to avoid cluttered backgrounds (and foregrounds), colors that are too bright etc.

3. Camera Settings

There is no right or wrong way to set your camera up for an environmental portrait as it will depend completely upon the effect you’re after and the situation you’re shooting in. A wider focal length in these situations also to give the environment prominence in the shot. This doesn’t mean you can’t shoot more tightly cropped or with a large aperture and shallow depth of field - ultimately anything goes and you’ll probably want to mix up your shots a little.

4. Posing

What sets the environmental portrait apart from candid portraits is that you post your subject. Some of the poses might seem slightly unnatural and dramatic but it’s often these more purposely posed shots that are more dramatic and give a sense of style to your shot.

The expression on the face of your subject is also very important in environmental photography. It should fits with the overall scene.

5. Props

Props can make or break an environmental portrait. If they are subtle and naturally fit within the context of the environment they can be very appropriate and add to the image nicely but you’ll want to avoid anything that doesn’t quite fit or that potentially distracts the attention of viewers. The same goes for the clothes that your subject wears. Try to be true to the context without getting too outlandish.

inspiring photographer : MARY ELLEN

one of my favourite among her work

Mary Ellen Mark has worked as a photojournalist for around 30 years, travelling worldwide and being published in leading magazines around the globe. Mary Ellen Mark began working for Look and Life magazines in the 1960s. She has since created photo essays for a broad range of news and fashion periodicals including Esquire, Holiday, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Stern, and Paris-Match. She was a member of Magnum for some years, resigning in 1981 to create her own company. She was voted "Most Influential Woman Photographer" in a recent poll of American Photo readers.

Having conceived the idea for many of the articles herself, Mark often returns to subjects (and places) for an extended period, producing book-length documentary projects. Her most well-recognized subjects include Mother Teresa and the Mission of Charity in India: the inmates of Ward 81, a locked ward for women at Oregon State Mental Hospital; prostitutes on Falkland Road in Bombay; and members of an Indian circus.

Mark photographs people, often people who are living on the edge of society. The works included in Mary Ellen Mark: In American, in the Bell Gallery collection, concentrate primarily on subsections of the middle and lower-middle classes: Christian bikers in Arizona, retirees in South Beach Florida, the Latin community in Miami.

Her pictures also show the women as individuals, and illustrate her ability to get close to people. She showed them and their emotions directly and without sentimentality in a series of moving pictures. Another essay from the 70s that was widely published was on customers in singles bars in New York.

		Indian Street Performers. India 1981

Acrobat Sleeping. Great Famous Circus, Calcutta, India, 1989

learn more about her at http://www.maryellenmark.com/

inspiring photographer : BRASSAI

“What characterizes a good photographer is that he has both that journalistic sense (he seizes whatever is interesting in the world) and, at the same time, the sense of form. For me, the criterion of a good photograph is that it be unforgettable."

Brassaï was born in Brasso, Transylvania in 1899. He lived in Paris for most of his life. He died in 1984. He is known for Brassaï, the "eye of Paris," is known for his urban photographs of Paris during the 1930s.Among his popular images are "Rue de Rivoli, 1937"; "La Femme De 'L'homme Gorille' Dans Sa Danse De Loie Fuller"

Rue de Rivoli, Paris, 1937

Hungarian-born Brassai (real name Gyula Halasz) come to Paris to be a painter and took up photography at Andre Kertesz's suggestion to make a living. Paris by Night, (1933) showed pictures taken inside the cafes and clubs frequented by the Paris underworld.

Brassai photographed many scenes of Paris, from urban graffiti to dancing in the streets. He sees Paris as a subject of infinite grandeur, his photographs providing a sensitive and often extremely dramatic exploration of its people, its resplendent avenues, and endlessly intriguing byways. Brassai’s reputation was established with the publication of his first book, Paris at Night, now a modern classic. Some of the pictures in this book are sharply defined, brilliantly lit, while others capture the mistiness of rainy nights. Still others concentrate on the shadowy life of the underworld.

As Brassai created more and more pictures of Parisian life, his fame became international. His pictures of "Graffiti" (writings and drawings scribbled by countless individuals on the crumbling walls of buildings) were the subject of his one - man show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Brassai has indicated something of his reason for making these pictures in the following statement: "the thing that is magnificent about photography is that it can produce images that incite emotion based on the subject matter alone."

Brassai has said many useful things about photography; one of the most valuable is the following statement: "We should try, without creasing to tear ourselves constantly by leaving our subjects and even photography itself from time to time, in order that we may come back to them with reawakened zest, with the virginal eye. That is the most precious thing we can possess".

inspiring photographer : ARNOLD NEWMAN

ARNOLD NEWMAN

New York City. 22 October, 2004.

Arnold Newman was born in New York and studied art at Miami University. He became a photographer because he couldn't afford to finish his university course. He left and was offered a job through a family friend as an apprentice to a professional photographer.

His first pictures of people were taken on the street, but he was particularly influenced by the photography of the FSA photographers including Walker Evans. They posed their subjects in their living rooms or in front of their bomes for their documentary portraits. It was an approach Newman used and developed as 'environmental portraiture' more than six decades ago. In his images, his subjects were carefully placed amid surroundings that commented in some way on their personality or achievements.

"I didn't just want to make a photograph with some things in the background," Newman said. "The surroundings had to add to the composition and the understanding of the person. No matter who the subject was, it had to be an interesting photograph. Just to simply do a portrait of a famous person doesn't mean a thing."

Newman became one of the 20th Century's foremost photographers not only because of who he shot, but how he shot them. Over the next 50 years, Newman went on to photograph most major celebrities of the 20th century for magazines such as Life, Look, Fortune, Holiday, The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, including Igor Stravinsky with the lid of his grand piano making a note, Leonard Bernstein, George Harrison, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Francis Bacon, Edward Hopper, Salvador Dali, Georgia O'Keefe, Berenice Abbott, Alfred Stieglitz, Franz Kline, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Max Ernst,Isaac Asimov, Eugene O�Neill, Paul Auster, Harry S. Truman, Yitzhak Rabin, Dwight Eisenhower, Marilyn Monroe, and even that so-called invisible man of the camera, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Some of his famous work

MARYLIN MONROE, Hollywood, 1962 © Photo Arnold Newman

ANDY WARHOL, New York, 1973 © Photo Arnold Newman

IGOR STRAVINSKY, New York, 1946 © Photo Arnold Newman