An environmental portrait is a portrait taken in the main subject’s usual environment, which could be places like their home or place of work, and they typically illuminate/highlight the subject’s life and/or surroundings. The term is most often used as a genre of photography.

When taking photos of a person in their natural surroundings, generally you will be able to more clearly portray their character/personality, therefore portraying their personality, rather than just a likeness of their physical appearance. It is also thought that when photographing a subject in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience. The background in these photos is a key feature as it portrays part of their characteristics and personality which are often things pointed out by the environment that someone works/lives/rests in.

Photographer James Philip Nelson was born in 1967 in Sevenoaks, Kent. He spent his childhood in Africa, Asia and South America, traveling around with his father, who worked as a geologist for International Shell. At the age of 7, he was sent to Stoneyhurst College boarding school in Lancashire UK.

In 2010, Nelson started to work on his second book, Before they Pass. Away He travelled for 3 years and photographed more than 35 indigenous tribes around the world in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and the South Pacific, using a 50-year-old 4x5in camera. Nelson said the project was “inspired by Edward S. Curtis and his great photographs of Native Americans”. Like Curtis, Nelson documents his subjects in a romantic, stylised and posed manner, with the aim of “putting them on a pedestal”. Nelson remarks that the project is not meant to convey “a documentary truth, but rather [his] own artistic interpretation and a celebration of diversity and beauty.” The tribes that Nelson photographed include the Huli and Kalam tribes of New Guinea, the Tsaatan of Mongolia and the Mursi people of the Omo River valley in southern Ethiopia. In a TED talk he described the working process used in this project and stated it occasionally took “months trying to find [these indigenous peoples] and then again weeks to gain their trust and permission to photograph them.” Nelson borrowed the funds for the project from a Dutch billionaire, Marcel Boekhoorn. As a result of the project, a book containing the photographs and texts, a limited edition of the book, as well as printed photo portraits were published.

More of his work:

During my visit to Hamptonne, I took pictures of objects within and around the farm. These objects were a mix of things such as crockery, food, clothing, personal objects and books.

My Best Images

Contact Sheets

At Hamptonne we got the chance to explore around the different farm houses that people would have lived in. They had been set up with the different items that people in that time would have used. For example their were shoes and hats at the front door and the table had food on it ready for the people to eat.

Editing

For my edits I have turned some of my photos black and white and I have kept some in colour but have increased the saturation or exposure to make them brighter and to give it a more vintage look. I have also made the black in some of my images more bold so that contrasts to some of the dull backgrounds.

Final Objects

I have picked these as my final photos because they each capture different aspects of the houses, how people use to live and what they used or wore. I like how the first image has vibrant reds next to two darker objects because it allows the hat to be the focus of the image but it still doesn’t take all of the attention away from the lantern or the knitted bag. I also like the fourth photo because the bold blacks sit nicely on top of the lighter grey tones from the book.

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography

By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.

ALFRED SANDER

Sander was born in Herdorf 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.

He spent his military service (1897–1899) as a photographer’s assistant and the next years wandering across Germany. In 1901, he started working for a photo studio in linz, Austria, eventually becoming a partner (1902), and then its sole proprietor (1904). He left Linz at the end of 1909 and set up a new studio in Cologne.

In 1911, Sander began with the first series of portraits for his work people of the 20th century. In the early 1920s, he came in contact with the cologne progressives a radical group of artists linked to the workers movement

In 1927, Sander and writer Ludwig Mathar travelled through Sardinia for three months, where he took around 500 photographs. However, a planned book detailing his travels was not completed.

Sander’s Face of our Time was published in 1929. It contains a selection of 60 portraits from his series People of the 20th Century, and is introduced by an essay by Alfred Doblin titled “On Faces, Pictures, and their Truth”. Under the Nazi regime, his work and personal life were greatly constrained. His son Erich, who was a member of the left wing socialists worker party (SAP), was arrested in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died in 1944, shortly before the end of his sentence. Sander’s book Face of our Time was seized in 1936 and the photographic plates destroyed.

Around 1942, during westawald he left Cologne and moved to the small village of Kuchhausen, in the westerwald region; this allowed him to save the most important part of his body of work. His Cologne studio was destroyed in a 1944 bombing raid, but tens of thousands of negatives, which he had left behind in a basement near his former apartment in the city, survived the war. 25,000 to 30,000 negatives in this basement were then destroyed in a 1946 fire.

In 1962, 80 photographs from the People of the 20th Century project were published in book format, under the name Deutschenspiegel. Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (German Mirror. People of the 20th Century).

Sander died of a stroke on 20 April 1964. He was buried next to his son Erich in Cologne’s Melaten cemetery .

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.

By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.

For my environmental portrait I will photograph a fishmonger at Homefields

I will be taking photos of the worker while focusing on light and angles.

I will conduct this shoot at some point in the next week.

I am designing the shoot in this way to take photos which represent the busy life of a Fishmonger. I will produce the best images by working with the worker to find the best lighting angle.

Contact Sheets

Here I have shown evidence of me creating collections in Lightroom, I have created multiple different collections such as Hampton objects and Hampton buildings. This helps me organise all of my photographs, like separating images those that are blog friendly, and the images that I would like to edit.

Editing and Final Images

Below I have demonstrated how I have edited some of my images to make certain features more prominent such as the sign below being brighter bringing out the yellow and reds in the image. Furthermore, editing the image of the shoes to create the texture more visible and the whites in the image lighter, as when I took the image the lighting in the room was limited. My favourite aspect of this image is its simplicity and the brighter yellow contrasting with the duller brown floor background.

I like how in Lightroom you can used the before and after function to compare how you have edited your images, like her where I have edited this image of some pots, located in the cooking house at Hampton. I like how I toned done on the colours in the image, giving it a more rustic and old fashioned look. In addition, I adjusted the clarity to make the individual pots more legible and the wall in the background now being whiter makes matches better with the dull browns in the image, making it more cohesive.

Mood board –

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Environmental portrait ideas

• Make the person the main focus of the photo, posing.
• Subject is not posing, natural action.
• Photo of a person in an environment where they feel most comfortable e.g. favourite walk, workplace, space in their house, shop, hobby, etc.
• Create a story with the subject with what they are doing/where they are.
• Use more than 1 person.
• Fill the frame with essential elements, not becoming too crowded and distract from the main focus.

What do environmental portraits say about us?

Environmental portraits help us to create strong stories for who it involves by giving further details into who they are and what they do, showing their personalities without us even knowing who they are. The objects and locations involved show how they relax, what they do in their spare time/how or who they spend it with, what they may do in their day to day lives.

What do they mean?

An environmental portrait is a type of photography which means showing someone in their natural environment which they might find to be safe and comforting.

What are environmental portraits?

Environmental portraits are photographs which are created through the filters, body-shot, compositions, angles, backgrounds and surroundings which we see through photos. This could be through the subject holding them or the viewer finding them through looking at the photo and exploring it with their eyes because they are supposed to catch peoples eyes and make them wonder and think about the subject more.

Photographer research

Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015)

Research –

• Born on March 20th 1940 Pennsylvania, United States.
• Her first camera was the Kodak Brownie.
• An American photographer.
• She is known best for her 1960s documentary images of counterculture.

Here are some examples of her work:

Image analysis –

Michelle Sank

Research –

• Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1953, but left to go to Exeter in 1987.
• A South-African photographer.
• Her work can be found in the Museum of fine arts in Houston.

Examples of her work –

Image analysis –

Contact Sheets

While at Hamptonne we got to photograph the Living History characters, which included the Goodwyf and the Wool Spinners. We aske the characters to move around and hold different objects so that we could get a wider range of photos. We also got the chance to work with Tom Kennedy, who help us to get different lighting throughout the shoot.

Editing

I have edited my favourite portraits in Lightroom and because most of them were taken inside and at at different angles toward the light, so were darker so I had to adjust the exposure so that Goodwyfs face can be seen more clearly. I have also changed that contrast in my portraits to make them brighter and seem like they were taken in a space with more lighting.

Final Portraits

I have picked these as my final portraits because I think that they have good lighting which shows the Goodwyfs features and what they would have wore during that time. In Lightroom, I have edited a couple so that they are in black and white and have adjusted different settings so that they photo can be seen more clearly. My favourite photo would be the first one when the Goodwyf is looking into the distance away from the camera, they light is on the front of her but it also hits some of the objects hanging from the ceiling.

At Hamptonne I took many photos which I later edited using Adobe Lightroom Classic. I started off by uploading my photos and organised them by using the ‘p’ and ‘x’ keys in order to choose the photos I liked and ignore those I didn’t.

I then begun briefly editing some of my favourite photos and highlighted them in yellow so they’d be easier to spot in the mix of photos before going back through and rating my brief edits with the number keys so I’d know which one’s to properly edit later on.