For my environmental portraits I took pictures of my mum who works in an archive. The lighting was overall quite hard to work with as the building doesn’t have much natural lighting  due to preserving old letters and artwork. As well as that it was hard at the start to get my mum to make eye contact without smiling or laughing, but the more photos I took the more comfortable she began to felt and it became less awkward in general. Due to the fact that a family member was the person I was taking photos of, I did find it easier to take control of the shoot and achieve the angle and positioning I wanted. I ensured that eye contact was made between my mum and the cameras in my final section of photos as they felt the most effective as an environmental portrait. I felt a natural expression rather than an a faked smile as it seems more fitted to the working environment. In most photos I took it from a level angle, in which the lens was at the same height as my mum’s eyes. On the other hand I took it from an upwards angle in the ones where my mum was on a ladder. I felt that me being lower showed a sense of authority from my mum which worked well as i am the visitor as she is the only one with a key to the store room and she is in them everyday. I wanted to take up an angle which showed a clear sign of territory because like ones work place is very similar to ones home because they are there nearly all day for 5 days, some people spend more time at work then at home. For instance if I was to enter someones home for the first time i would be respectful and sit where i was told, only come round when invited, which is what I wanted to gain from low angle a sense of obdeince and respect towards my mum and her working environment.In this shoot I wanted to break the gender stereotype of man at work and how there are supposed to be the ones who lift heavy objects, this ties in with the photos in the archive store rooms in which my mum has to move documents and art daily. As well as that I wanted to take picture of my mum as her line of work as its less common in a island which is dominated by the finance sector. I have several other family members who I considered for this task but they all work in offices and I wanted to capture a portrait within an environment of work which is scarce in Jersey. Even though Jersey Archive doesn’t have the best lighting for photography sue to its lack of windows it is a very modern building which goes very well in contrast with the extremely old documents, art work and film that my mum repairs.

Final Outcomes