Portrait Photography | Environmental Portrait

© 2010 Wazari Wazir | Looking for Books | Kinokuniya Suria KLCC

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.

By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.  (Source Wikipedia)

Actually we can’t take a photograph here in the bookstore, there is a sign of “No Photograph” at the entry door but I want to capture my son being happy, cheerful and curious browsing some books at my favorite Kinokuniya Bookstore, what I do is, I just hang my camera around my shoulder and not act like I want to take a photograph, I use  UWA lens, Ultra Wide Angle Lens 10-20mm, so I don’t need a lot of space to take a photograph, furthermore I want to take an environmental photograph, not a head and shoulder portrait, so wide angle is the right lens for this kind of situation.

This area where I take a photograph of my son is quite bright, there is a large glass or window just behind me, where I shoot this photograph, what I do first is to take a reading, I use manual setting here, after I get the right exposure, I just wait for the right moment to take a picture while at the same time my eyes busy looking for security guard or bookstore staff, I know even if they found me taking pictures here, the best they will do is to tap behind my back and politely asked me not to take a photographs but if that happen, my mood will swing, I’ll loose my interest, so I don’t want that to happen, I must shoot and act fast.

There is a lot of photo opportunity  here if photography is allowed, I like to play with lines and perspective, the rows of bookshelf really makes a great leading line, a great perspective that will lead a viewers eyes to the main subject. In this kind of situation, a camera with great performance at High ISO will make the job easier, I can push the ISO up to 1000 or 2000 and not worry about the noise but I don’t have that camera, I mean a camera that is good at High ISO, so what I do is I try to take my son somewhere, where there is a lot of bright light and fortunately the children section is located around brightly lit area where a lot of natural light coming in.

A portrait is not just about head and shoulder shot, it is about a person, a personality of your subject, their character and their environment where the picture is taken really help to tell a story, this kind of a picture will be remembered forever, will become a nostalgia, this bookstore may not be here forever, maybe it will move somewhere  or maybe there is  renovation takes place in the future and everything changes, so this will be a nostalgia and hopefully when my son big enough and visit this place on his own, it will be like a sentimental walk, hopefully in the future my son will remember this moment where his parent used to take him to the bookstore and maybe he can smile whenever he come across looking at this picture.

A photograph like this has a lot more stories to tell than just a head and shoulder shot and people viewing this picture really don’t need much information about the subject because, everything is almost there, you just need to tell the viewers when or where the picture is taken and for the rest, let your picture do the talking.

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