Basic Photography | The Environmental Portrait
© 2011 Wazari Wazir | My Son Playing at the Beach | Teluk Kemang | 24mm | ISO 100 | f/4 | 1/400
Basically there are two types of people or portrait photography. Portrait and environmental portrait. When we talk about portrait photography, usually it was a close up picture of the person being photograph, basically head and shoulder, and leaving the background out of focus and our eyes are drawn to the subject face only. With this kind of portrait, you don’t know who they are, what they are doing for a living and you don’t have any idea where the picture is taken if all you can see is just a close up of the subject face.
Maybe if that person wearing a traditional headgear, you might be able to tell where the picture is taken but it could be far away from the birthplace of the person where you take a formal portrait of that person in your studio, thousand kilometers away from where they come from. Basically close up portrait shot is about the expression, feeling, sadness or anything about that person that can be seen from his expression but they don’t tell the whole story.
Now there is second category about people photography which is environmental portraiture, usually environmental portrait will include his surroundings, where he work, rest or play which says something about them. When you look at the photograph, you immediately will know where the picture is taken, at home, at the beach or at the office.
Even though you can’t tell exactly where the location is, I mean the exact name of the location but you have the idea where the picture is taken, for an example like the photograph of my son above, by looking at the photographs, you will know that the picture were taken at the beach, somewhere in the world and to be exact at Teluk Kemang beach, which is approximately two hours leisurely drive from Kuala Lumpur.
Usually environmental portraiture will look a little bit messy, cluttered but need not to worry though, just photograph it as it is, it is not about to make your subject stand out from the background but it is about your subject and it’s environment, the best thing about environment portrait is that, you can take it with your kit lens, no need to worry about blurring out the background, you need the background but nevertheless you need to very careful about the composition, even though the environmental portrait is about your subject and it’s surrounding, you must make sure that your composition will make your subject dominant in the photograph and not the background. The surroundings or the background should act as a supporting element only, giving context to the subject being photograph.
So the very next time when you go out taking picture of your child, don’t forget to loosen up a bit, I mean after you take a close up portrait of your kids, let them play, they them do whatever they wanted top do and just take picture candidly of them, environmental portraiture has a lot more story to tell than just a close up shot of your children.
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