While working and researching for my project. I feel like my other mood board is slightly wrong and I decided to do a new one as I found more images and inspiration for my project.

I feel like this one is more accurate as well it’s a good guidance to the type of shot that would be interesting to take and would look really good for both me and the artist and that they could use on the website.

Most of these images I gathered by looking up different artist and their website to see what type of images they have and what the artist might be looking to have done.

Looking at this mood board I gathered a lot of ceramics as my first shoot is with a ceramic student so I just wanted to be prepared to know what she might want but also to know what works and what doesn’t especially since this would be the first time I would be photographing someone in their studio and their work.

Once I looked at the ways to improve on portraits, I am now looking at tips and techniques to shoots environmental portraits. I will be looking at 10 tips.

So to begin what is an environmental portrait.

Environmental portrait photography is making a illustration of a person in their environment. It’s a portrait in which the person is connected to the location they are in. Good environmental portrait will tell a strong story of their subject. The natural surrounding will give the viewer insight to who the person is, what they do and where they are. Locations that help to tell a person story could be : their home, their workplace, favourite coffee shop or bar, where they play sports etc. The location and the person should tie in together in a meaningful way. This will come from the setup, candid shot.

1. RESEARCH THE PEOPLE AND LOCATION.

Knowing who you are photographing is a key, it will help you create more compelling portraits of them. So for example if you know something about the person’s life story – it will add meaning to the portraits. Finding out their location and what’s significant about it. Sometimes this will be obvious but other times it won’t. So it will be important to ask because you might not see something that could be vital in telling your subject’s story. For environmental portraiture works when we can relate the subject to their surroundings.

2. TELL THEIR STORY – ANSWER PEOPLE’S QUESTIONS WITH YOUR PHOTOS

So you want to answer questions viewers of the photo may have – Who the person is, what do they do, where do they live? When setting up to make an environmental portrait look around. Look at the background, check for element that will support your subject’s story and answer those questions about them. This can be challenging but doing you best to build up an informative illustration of subject.

3. PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR WORLD

Sit where they are sitting, stand where they are standing. Try to see the world from their perspective. Be the environmental portrait photographer that looks beyond the composition. Looking at the setting they way they see it may give you some more clues on who they are and how best to photograph them. So don’t be afraid and direct the subject. Most of the time we are familiar with the surrounding so we then take things for granted. The subject may be telling you all the details so this will not enable you to take their portraits as best as you can. So by putting yourself in their shoes – you are trying to see their world to how they see it. This will let you to start to take better environmental portraits.

4. ENGAGE WITH YOUR SUBJECT

Talk to your subject. Connecting with the person you are making a portrait of will help you as you’ll create more dynamic illustration of them. When starting off and taking some photos, show them on the back of the camera as people love seeing their pictures so this will lead to a conversation and some more photographs. Since you have engaged with the subject and they seen some results of how they look – the dynamic has changed. Continuing to make their portraits you are able to make a very different series of the environmental photographs.

5. BE FRIENDLY AND RELAXED

So don’t focus on yourself as your subject will reflect you like a mirror. Meaning if you are nervous this will show on your subject, if you are uncomfortable they will be uncomfortable. So the more you relax and enjoy the process the more likely it is your subject will relax too. So remember to create a positive vibe – smile and chat to stimulate the mood.

6.HAVE YOUR CAMERA SETTINGS READY

Prepare your camera’s settings before you engage with your subject. As thinking about what exposure settings will distract you once you approach your subject. Stop and think about it, have camera ready and have the right lens on. Don’t use a super wide lens, unless you want to distort your subject. A mid-range lens, between a 35mm and 70mm is a good choice. Its good to be at a comfortable distance when making environmental portraits. Being too far back with long lens – makes it more difficult to connect with the subject. Depending on the style of portrait you want, holding the subject attention may not be important.

7. FILL THE FRAME

Filling the frame with what is relevant to the phoot is far more important that trying to follow a bunch of rules. You can attempt to enhance your compositions with leading lines. Lovely framing or making sure your horizon is straight are also powerful. None of these method are significant if your frame is lacking essential element. As you need to concentrate on the story or if there are distractions in it. Photography it a certain way, then try alternatives, You want to make sure that what is in your frame supports the story you are telling. This is the difference between a simple portrait and environmental portraiture. So look at everything you can see in the background. Ask yourself if it is relevant and related to the person you are making a portrait of – if it’s not then do something about it. There are a various techniques to make sure your background helps your picture – move your point of view, have your subject move or move the distracting element from the background.

8.TRY A DEEP DEPTH OF FIELD

A deep depth of field – where a lot of the image is in focus is normal with environmental portraits. As it is necessary to show what is surrounding your subject. Having a narrow aperture setting, means a considerable amount of your composition will show the detail. This can be problematic and with so much in sharp focus the main subject may become lost or blend in too much with the background. Careful placement of your subject in the frame makes for strong environmental portraiture. Naturally focus on the eyes of the subject, controlling the aperture and relative distances gives control of how sharp or how blurred the background is. It is important to find a balance of how much is in focus. Everything does not need to be sharp in an environmental portrait for it to be an effective part of the composition.

9. USE PROPS (IF THEY HELP TO TELL THE STORY)

Sometimes you may have the opportunity to control what is in your portrait. Look around for something the person can hold or otherwise interact with that is meaningful to their story. If you’re working with a dull background, introducing a prop can make a big difference. Props are a great way to add more culture, colour, or texture into am environmental portraiture.

10. POST-PROCESS TO ENHANCE

You will not have any control over your subject and background. At times like this keep in mind how you might improve your environmental portrait during the post- processing stage. Removing distracting objects by cloning them out will often make the portrait stronger. If there is something behind you subject that you cannot move, consider removing it in Photoshop. Creating a vignette is also a popular method to help bring more attention to the subject. This involves darkening the edges of the frame so the viewer’s eye moves to your subject.
Be careful not to overdo this technique as you will not want to loose detail relevant to the story you are telling.

Generally, you don’t want to have the background complement your main subject. Creating a balance in your composition where the main feature of your environmental portrait is the subject is what you want to aim for.
The subject is the most important in environmental portraits. Concentrating on the story and your subject, not too much on your camera equipment, will help you produce more dynamic photographs.

How would you go about gaining extra knowledge, becoming more aware with whats going on in the industry. As time goes on there is a lot of things that you need to keep up with.

One way you can achieve this is by keeping on top of trends. So social media is a very good way on keep on top of everything. Also taking extra classes, attending different workshops just to keep up on top of everything, new techniques etc. Seeing what is on top and see what works and what doesn’t.

If someone might not have the money for the courses/ workshops as they might be expensive a easy way to learn new things or even learn new ways to use different software i.e. Photoshop, Premiere pro. Especially if your only starting out or you have been using those software’s – YouTube Tutorials on how to use them / new tools etc. is very useful and helpful without needing to leave the house. This option is very useful when you are busy and can’t find the time to attend this – so you can do this at the time it suit you. Since the software are updating so often they are new things added to them and you might’ve not known that they were there so even if you follow a YouTube page that adds them – you will stay on top of them. I personally do this and I feel like its a very good way to learn new things, also I can watch them when I’m on train on my phone or even when i have little bit of spare time on my hand.

Some colleges do part time course which are usually at night time – doing this will train you up but also you will feel more comfortable. The knowledge you gain will stay with you so if you think that you have attended a course or a workshop and you feel like it didn’t help you could be wrong it did – it’s just that you might not need that knowledge then but it will come handy in the future.

This is my first experimental shoot i done. It’s experimental as i still don’t know my concept and where i would like to go with this.

I went to studios in East belfast and talked to some of the artist that were there. Having a conversation about what i was doing and whether it was okay if i took some images. I only talked to some that were there but i received a very friendly welcome and each one of them were okay with the photos being taken of them.

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I feel like I have taken more of a documentary approach to those and they didn’t turn out as good as I thought, I need to look at they way to take good environmental portraits as these aren’t in my opinion. I had looked into environmental portraits but these aren’t those. I feel like I failed big time and I need to do more research before my next shoot so that I won’t make the same mistake again.

Finally I made the decision. It was a tough one – picking out of 9 good options which I found each one really interesting. I decided to go for Editorial Portrait Photography. Which requires me to have a set of environmental portraits of 4-6 Creative Professionals for a magazine feature on the Creative Industries.

Creative Professionals – what does this really mean? Who are they?

A creative professional who is also known as a creative specialist is a person who is employed for the extraction of skills in creative endeavors. Creative professions include writing, art, design, theater, television, radio, motion pictures, related crafts, as well as marketing, strategy, scientific research and development, product development, engineering, some types of teaching and curriculum design, and more.

Source taken from Wikipedia.

So who do I really want to photograph, what type of people would I like to photograph. There are lots of things I need to think about what I need to do. Creating a plan to keep on track on it.

So to start my project out I decided to create a mood board. This helps me to think of ideas but is also a very good inspiration. As it lets me look back at when I feel like I am stuck and I don’t know what i’m doing or I feel like I’m not going anywhere with my images – doing shoots but they all look the same with no improvement.

So this is a mood board I made with the images i gather from Google images when i search for Editorial Environmental Portraits. When starting a project i always look for inspiration in the way the compose the images, whether it’s a close up, mid range image or showing a lot of space around the person.

From looking through a lot of images i decided to pick those ones because i feel like they are good examples of editorial environmental portraits. Each one of the images speak so much for themselves which i feel like its important for your photograph to be able to do without you needing to add text or captions.

From looking at those im wondering who should i photograph. Should i photograph one person in more different locations or maybe focus on different jobs and get them in their working environment.

I’m still thinking about my concept and what i would like to do for this. I feel like doing a practise shoot will let me decide this.