For my personal investigation i am looking into non- government bodies and how they impact family and community life in third world countries. My main aim when i go to Burkina Faso is to focus on this impact and try to capture it in my photographs. The style i am aiming to capture and spend the most time photographing is environmental portraits. I think these are key to showing the community spirit because firstly a portrait shows a lot about the people and the community and what and of jobs they do and secondly the background of environment hints at the conditions they are living in and the harshness of their society. It is key to capture their surroundings as this has a massive impact on their community , family and general everyday.
With the inspiration of photographer, Steve McCurry i hope to capture powerful images of individuals going about their daily lives, however slightly staged the image as i am aiming to have them looking straight into the camera lens and not smiling. This will push my photographic ability as communication will be difficult and some people may not want their photo being taken in this way. However i will attempt these images because i think they are bolder and stronger and show more of their facial feature and make a more interesting photograph than if they were smiling as this is more just a vernacular family portrait. Although Steve McCurry is my influential artist for this shoot i will vary from his work creating my own style. I am slightly staging the image with getting them to purposely look at the camera but i will not stage/plan their stance, action, job, ect as i want everything to be very natural and in the moment as it is documentary photography but as they are looking at the camera it takes a slightly more tableaux approach, telling a important and powerful story of their lives, community and family.
| Genre | – Environmental portrait |
| Concept | -Show the community through formal environmental portraits, full body shots of the individuals, in their natural environment, telling a story of who they are through clothing, background, stance
-Looking at the camera -No facial expression – |
| Subject | 1)Images of children – independence – taking on parental responsibilities as in their community they have to be mature for their age
● 2)Occupations – the jobs they do – taking notice of teachers, doctors ect who are extremely importrant to the developing community ● 3)Group portraits – family portraits (shows importance of family to them), contrast to our lives as they have bigger families = bigger communities – homes in the background – family companies/ family run shops |
| Composition | Rule of thirds – Portraits, if they’re working, to follow the rules of thirds. Have them in either outer axis of the image so the individual takes up no more than 1/3 of the grid and then the background is the rest of the image keeping everything in proportion
Framing – aim for framing of the individual to be created through the use of the environment to create a natural frame Depth – individual/subject/focal point to be in the foreground of the image and the environment or current location of the individual to be in the background. Angle – experiment with all different angles but main focus to be getting eye level photos, showing equality and there eyes coming straight at the image. |
| Lighting & Colour | – Colourful and bright image, created by their natural use of colour in their clothing. trying to capture personalities whos clothes portray their bright personalities.
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Steve McCurry is my main inspiration for this shoot and these are a few of his most influential images which i will keep in mind when doing my shoot.
Contact Sheets
i placed all of my best environmental portraiture images from the shoots that i did across the three week period into on folder in light room. i then went through each image and flagged the best images if there was for example three of the same photo but from different angles. I then filtered the images so that i could only see these images. then i went through using the coloured filters as you can see above to select my best images and possible images which i would then later edit. I think that my shoots where i tried to capture environmental portraits was successful, i was able to make images which contained both a portrait of the individual swell as include some of the environment in the background which tells you a bit more about whats going on. This shoot was probably my favorite to do because i enjoyed both ways i captured these photographs. sometimes i would should approach a situation and take an immediate photo which was completely natural and then other times id intervene a bit more in the situation and ask the individuals to stand still so i could take a photo of them. Both these types of photography show environmental background the difference is that some were more staged than others.