My first assignment was to take a range of environmental portraits that help to reflect the culture, economic and social backgrounds of the subjects in the images, and to capture a series of candid images, showing un-posed life and events occurring naturally, often without the subjects knowledge that the image is being taken in order to keep a sense of naturalism. The environmental portraits are supposed to accurately reflect the subjects in the photographs, showing aspects of their personal lives, which are normally left unseen behind closed doors. As houses and homes often reflect the beliefs, social and economic classes, and culture of the individuals who live there (through belongings, style and the people themselves), I decided to take a range of images inside the subjects own houses, as well as in places they feel comfortable, that are personal to them, I order to better reflect who they are as individual people. In contrast to this, the candid photographs are meant to reflect the raw, natural events and occurrences in the subjects lives.

The first contact sheet includes all of the images from my environmental photo-shoot:

The second contact sheet includes all of the images from my candid photo-shoot:

During the editing process, I used a selection of different editing techniques. I cropped a few of my images in order to place the subject at the centre of the image sombre attention could be drawn to them, and with most other images I altered the colour balance/saturation/contrast in order to either raise of reduce the contrast of the images.

• 

• 

• 

Above is a selection of some of the basic adjustments I made. I often altered the contrast of the images in order to highlight the outlines of the subject, and for a few images I altered the colour balance of the images to highest the main colour of the image (for example, emphasising the red and magenta mid-tones in the first image allowed for a highly saturated pink, which I feel produces a better example of the personality/style of the subject). Furthermore, I reduced the saturation of a number of images in order to reduce the viewers concentration on the colours, and focus more on the actions/poses of the subjects, which I feel in a number of cases is important for the reflection of the mood/meaning of the portrait.