An environmental portrait is a portrait taken of a person or people in their natural environment that they live in or a place that says something about who they are. It is often a place of work, rest or play.
Some Famous Environmental Photographers:
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century. Sander was born in Herdof, the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. While working at a local mine, Sander first learned about photography by assisting a photographer who was working for a mining company. With financial support from his uncle, he bought photographic equipment and set up his own darkroom.
This picture is clearly an environmental portraiture showing a young man carrying some bricks. This is an environmental portraiture because the image gives us an indication about the person being photographed, in this case we know he is a brick layer. We can clearly see that this image is in black and white and split into sections. These sections are as followed, the mans body, his head and then the bricks in which he is carrying. The lighting appears to be up high, illuminating the mans facial features and bricks. This image is also highly contrasted, the man himself is well lit up which contrasts with the very dark background.
There is a large tonal range within this image which is evident where his face is a lot lighter than the rest of his body. There is a significant amount of light directed more towards the bricks and the background is completely black. This use of light it used to signify the profession in which this man involved himself in. The ISO of the image appears to be quite high, we know this because we can see most of the detail within the mans clothing as well as the bricks. If the ISO was lower this detail would not be so evident. There are various textures within this image for example the rough and creased clothing as well as the textures involved in the bricks.
The concept behind this image can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In my opinion the photographer is trying to portray the idea of child labor by using a male that looks rather young doing a highly difficult and tiring job. However the male is not quite young enough to maybe fit into the category of ‘child’ therefore the photographer could also be referring to the times when people would have to get jobs at a very young age to survive and look after their family.
This image was taken by August Sanders in 1928 and is called ‘The Brick Layer’. The original name for this image is ‘Handlanger’ which is German for Henchman
Arnold Newman was an American photographer who was noted for his environmental portraits of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images.
I really like this image as it shows a real sense of depth throughout this image, the shadows help create depth as it helps show the distance of the arches on the left hand side of the image. This black and white environmental portrait conveys a number of stories around the scientist on the right hand side of the image. The soft natural lighting from the sun creates a more dramatic but also natural looking image. Furthermore, the position of the light source creates a shadow on the side of the mans face which helps increase the dramatic atmosphere. In this photograph a high contrast is used in this black and white image which allows the man to stand out more in his white lab coat. The contrast comes from the the black shadows on the left side of the image and then the grey walls and the white lab coat on the right side of the image. This influences the viewer to see the photograph in more detail.
Firstly, I changed the brightness and contrast so I could enhance the colours within the photograph.
Once I was happy with the brightness and contrast, I then changed the photograph into black and white where I also altered the colours again.
I then used the levels adjustment to enhance the black and white even more until I was eventually happy with it.
This was my final image.
This was my favorite image from my shoot and out of my selected edits as it was the most direct image out of the shoot as the character in the image was looking at the camera whereas in the other images the characters in the photographs weren’t looking at the camera.
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander’s first book Face of our Time was published in 1929. Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century.
This black and white environmental portrait of three German boys in suit’s strongly reflects there social class clearly and also creates a story as to who they are. This image was clearly before or well after the first world war as the three boys would be wearing another suit as this picture was taken round the same time. There is a strong contrast in this image, coming from the grey sky and the boys black suits. The use of the contrast really helps the three boys stand out in the picture. The dull natural lighting lights up the boys faces also helping them to stand out and also sharpening their features.
Michelle Sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She left there in 1978 and has been living in England since 1987. Her images reflect a preoccupation with the human condition and to this end can be viewed as social documentary. Her work encompasses issues around social and cultural diversity.
Photo analysis of one of Michelle’s pieces
This coloured environmental portrait is of a girl sitting down rolling a cigarette. The girl in this image is positioned on the right hand side of the image which applies to the rule of thirds as she is following the right vertical line. A fast shutter speed was used to capture the vibrant colours from the sky and the multi coloured boxes in the background. A hard light and a high iso has been used as all the colours within this image have been made brighter and bolder and make this image look brighter.
Arnold Newman is generally acknowledged as the pioneer of the environmental portrait, he is also known for his still life and abstract photography, and he is considered as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century.
Newman found his vision in the empathy he felt for artists and their work. Although he photographed many personalities, he maintained that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer.
Newman normally captured his subjects in their most familiar surroundings with representative visual elements showing their professions and personalities
“I didn’t just want to make a photograph with some things in the background, 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’s best-known images were in black and white, although he often photographed in color. This image was photographed in 1946 and is a black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano which became his signature image, even though it was rejected by Harper’s Bazaar, the magazine that gave the assignment to Newman.
Perhaps his most celebrated image is a 1946 portrait of the composer Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky, his expression deeply serious, is confined to the bottom left corner of the picture, cropped to his head and shoulders, an elbow resting on the piano, his hand supporting his head. The rest of the photograph is taken up by the raised lid of a large grand piano, strategically silhouetted against a blank wall, which is divided off-center into a gray and white rectangle. The lid forms the reversed shape of a leaning, abstract musical note.
He was one of the few photographers allowed to make a portrait of the famously camera-shy Henri Cartier-Bresson.
One of the most famous was this sinister picture of the German industrialist Alfried Krupp, taken for Newsweek in 1963. Krupp is smirking, his fingers clasped as he confronts the viewer against the background of a assembly line in the Ruhr. In the color version his face has a greenish cast. The impression it leaves was no accident: Newman knew that Krupp had used slave labor in his factories during the Nazi reign and that he had been imprisoned after World War II for his central role in Hitler’s war machine.