Photoshoot 1:

Photoshoot 2:

Photoshoot 3:

Photoshoot 4:

Photoshoot 5:

Photoshoot 6:

Photoshoot 7:

About the photoshoot:

For this photoshoot, we were in small groups and went around the school to experiment in taking our own environmental portraits. This is useful because the background effect of education and learning significantly added the effect to make it a successful environmental portrait. This gave us the opportunity to investigate how to make the subject the main focus in the images, and how much of the environment to include. We mainly visited teachers, as the use of their desks or other key backgrounds added to the effect.

My favourite photoshoot I completed was photoshoot 2. This is because we managed to capture the canteen lady from different angles, where she is doing different things. this created a successful set of images because it gives the viewer an insight o n the specific duties canteen workers need to do in order to carry out a successful canteen for schools. I like how she is interacting with the camera in different ways, such as pretending to advertise, rather than just smiling. However, I did make a few mistakes when carrying out these photoshoots. Such as not getting enough of the background in compared to the model. This was a drawback because it means we cannot get a clear understanding of the profession if we cannot see it. Another mistake I made when taking these photos is not focusing the camera, leading to some images being clearly more blurred than others. This looks unprofessional as it seems I was in a rush, subtracting effect from the image. The final big mistake I made was not adjusting the aperture and shutter speed. This was another reason for some of my images being blurry, and also it meant the lighting was affected.

Overall these photoshoots deepened my understanding of environmental portraits and how we feel closer to the subject by seeing their background.

Sian Davey’s photography explores the psychological, social and political surroundings of herself and the people around her. Davey was born in Brighton in 1964. She studied Fine Art painting at Bath Academy of Fine Art in 1985. She was a psychotherapist for fifteen years before becoming a photographer, and her training in psychotherapy fundamentally informs and inspires her work, which often feels intimate and features themes of depression and grief.

Many of Sian Davey’s photographs are environmental portraits, which tell a story about the subject’s life and usual location. For example, in her project ‘Martha’ she has photographed her step-daughter in various locations, either by herself or in groups of her friends.

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Image Analysis

This is a digital photo by the photographer Sian Davey. There are 5 subjects in this photograph. The focal point is the person sitting on the bed in the foreground, and the composition follows the rule of thirds. In this image, the lighting appears to be natural daylight, creeping in from the window in the background. Some parts of the photo are overexposed, for example, the subject closest to the window, whilst some are underexposed. The depth of field is shallow, as the background and midground is blurred. The shutter speed appears to be fast at around 1/250, the image is a bit grainy, so I believe the ISO is around 1600.

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This is a digital photo by the photographer Sian Davey. The focal point is the 1 subject in this photograph, who is holding a newspaper and is sitting on a moving vehicle. This composition follows the rule of thirds. In this image, the light source appears to be strong and heavily contrasting natural daylight from the window on the left of the photograph. The depth of field is shallow, as the background and midground is blurred. To represent the movement of the vehicle the subject is sitting in, there is a horizontal motion blur, obstructing the details in shadowed areas even further. Because of this, I believe the shutter speed is slower and around 1/30, and the ISO is around 100.

Photoshoot 1 :

Photoshoot 2 :

Photoshoot 3 :

Photoshoot 4 :

Photoshoot 5 :

Photoshoot 6 :

Photoshoot 7 :

Photoshoot 8 :

Photoshoot 9 :

In this photoshoot, my classmate and I, went into St Helier town and walked around asking different members of the public if we could photoshoot them in their working environment. It started hard as we didn’t plan anything. But we quickly started asking lot’s of different people if we could photograph them and explained it was for our A-Level photography. A lot of workers actually really wanted us to photograph them and got excited when we asked them, especially the construction worker and the Ice cream cabin lady.

These are my 3 favourite photos I have taken. These 3 are really good because they all show the engagement towards the camera even with hand gestures in the first.

I took a variety of different shots from different angles and depths. To achieve this I used ether a 70-200mm or a wide angle lens 10-20mm. I have used a colour coding system to make quickly look through the shots and select the ones I want to edit. The green photos are the ones I like and want to potentially edit some, the red are the shots that are repeats or just don’t work, for example they could not be in focus or have a busy background that just doesn’t work for the results I want.

I did a second photo shoot as I felt my first one wasn’t overly telling or interesting. I used the same model but instead of a his work I asked him ‘what is an environment that describes you and your passions?) I got many answers of different hobbies, interests, work and even things like food. However I chose to use the prompt of my motorbike and off – roading. This led to me exploring where we could take the photos over here as there isn’t actually anywhere over here that represents the style of riding he does. I picked Gronez Castle as not only it was the closest to the rocky mountains in Spain etc but he also has a large interest in Jersey’s history so this was a great location to show the models different interests and what makes up his ‘environments’.

These are the settings I used for the three photos below. By using a 70-200mm lens it allowed me to take a range of shots with high quality.

Before

After

I started by using the RAW settings on photoshop, when you upload a RAW file it allows you to make some basic adjustments to the image prior proper editing. This helped bring some colour back to the photo before I changed too much about it.

To complete this edit I made sure to use the dodge and burn tools to add depth to the image, the darker parts, like bricks lacked colour so using the dodge tool brought light onto it and made the image feel more open. I then mixed this with using the dodge tool on the grass and motorbike to draw attention to the subject and making the colours feel more vibrant and true to life.

For this edit I felt it only needed Lightroom editing, so this meant I adjusted the colouring and lighting. I felt it needed the exposure bringing down to reveal the blue sky and sea, this also made the rest of colours less washed out. By then continuing to edit the image by decreasing the whites, blacks and highlights it took away from the over exposed look.

With the final image I edited I chose to mostly just use the RAW settings adjustments as I felt it didn’t need much else as too much editing can over complicate the image and I didn’t want it to take away from the photography style. Overall I’m really happy with the results of this shoot and I think it has produced strong results and that are inspired by August Sander’s work. By editing my best three shots I have now got good final images to presents in a virtual gallery.

“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”

Environmental portraits to me are when a person is a main model who stands in the frame of the photograph with a heavy background behind them meaning its busy and many tings can be observed, this helps us to see what the photograph is about and helps us observe the main properties.

Good environmental portraits will tell strong stories of their subjects. Their immediate surroundings will give the viewer insight into where these people are, what they do, and who they are. Locations that help to tell a person’s story could be places where they relax, work, or play: Their home.

ideas of environmental portraits:

• having one main character with many people in the background doing something, For example, a chef is the main person standing in front of the camera and there are servants in the background running around trying to get the food plated up.
• taking photographs of only the face and nothing else meaning the body is cropped out of the photo. This will put a main focus on the face and possibly the background, I could get the model to go to a beach or maybe a field to really show the environmental aspects.
• taking a picture of on person being busy their main focus isn’t on the camera but on the job they are doing. We could get there whole body in the photograph to help see their body language to really understand the point of the photo.
• I could take a picture of someone’s whole body facing me and looking at the camera and then changing the colour to black and white to add a different perspective on the emotions, or whether how old the photo maybe look like it is.

different ideas to consider:

ARTISTS:

• August Sander (1876 – 1964)
• Paul Strand (1890 – 1976)
• Arnold Newman (1918 – 2006)
• Daniel Mordzinski (1960 – )
• Annie Leibovitz (1949 – )
• Mary Ellen Mark (1940 – 2015)

PLACES TO TAKE PICTURES:

this can include jobs or hobbies, cultures, religions and your mood.

Such as:

• Central Market
• Fish Market
• St Helier Shops
• Hair salons/barbers
• Coffee shop
• Farms
• Building Sites
• Harbour

PEOPLE TO TAKE PICTURES OF:

• Barber/Hairdresser
• Dentist/Doctor
• Postman
• Market trader
• Florist
• Tattooist
• Musician
• Barista
• Fishmonger

August Sander

Biography :

August Sander (17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander was born on November 17, 1876 in Herdorf. the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. He had six siblings. While working at the local Herdorf iron-ore mine, Sander first learned about photography by assisting a photographer from Siegen who was also working for the mining company. With financial support from his uncle, he bought photographic equipment and set up his own darkroom.

Photos :

Photo Analysis :

August Sandler’s’ work is very interesting he uses people in different environments and captures them in the moment creating images that have a true meaning and story behind them, in all of his photos the person he is photographing is always in the centre or just slightly off centred causing them to be the main focus of the images and catching peoples attention to think about what he truly is capturing.

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.

Mood board

Analysis of environmental photographer Mary-Ellen Mark‘s work

Marginalized people are people who have been historically disempowered and oppressed by influential and discriminatory groups. These people are usually women, people with disabilities, people of colour, LGBTQ+ folks, Indigenous peoples, people of a lower socio-economic status and many more.

I’d rather pull up things from another culture that are universal that we can all relate to.

– Mary-Ellen Mark

She says that the style of her work is somewhat in between a documentary and portrait photography and prefers to use black-and-white film, “for the immediacy and abstraction of it.” However she did occasionally use colour. Her primary tools that she used to take her photographs were plastic, pinhole, and vintage film cameras as her primary tools.

In the mid or late 1960s, Mark had also taken photographs of several important events and places including Times Square, the women’s liberation movement, and the Vietnam War demonstrations. 

She was inspired by photography and film when she had first looked through a lens, as well as being inspired by two men named  Henri Cartier-Bresson (A French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography) and Irving Penn (An American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still life). They had inspired her to take photographs of people that she refers to as “infamous”.

Below are examples of Mark’s environmental portraits;

In this photo we can see a family sitting in a car. Their miserable, upsetting expressions can suggest that they aren’t living a nice life and are maybe outcasts or living in poverty.

In this image we can see a young girl in dirty and torn clothing, and other people standing on what seems like a table with also torn clothing, which can suggest that she comes from a poor background. Her pose expresses that she could be feeling uncomfortable or shy or afraid, her eyes can also suggest that she’s uncomfortable because she isn’t looking at the camera directly.

Her surroundings can suggest that she’s living in a poor environment because of the broken table, she could also come from quite a chaotic background too because of the people that are standing on the tables

Interpretation

In these few examples of Mary-Ellen Mark’s work, we can see a variety of marginalized people who have been photographed in their natural environments. Each of these photographs tell a bit about the background of the subjects by using their surroundings, clothing, facial expressions and their poses.

The majority of the subject’s faces have a blank or melancholy expression and in some of the pictures the subjects don’t even look directly into the camera which can suggest that they are ashamed and/or upset by their living conditions as well as how they are being treated by society.

Mark has wisely used a variety of different angles in her photographs, instead of having the camera face straight on, this makes the images have more life and keeping the camera further away from the subjects shows us more background which give us a better image of what the subject’s environment is like.

The use of black and white films further adds to the sad, melancholy mood that we can see on the majority of the subject’s faces as well as their poses. Most of them have a more cowardly or afraid pose which adds to their sadness.