What Makes a Great Environmental Portrait?
Capturing a portrait of a person in a location or setting they frequent is what makes an environmental portrait. Travel and Documentary are just two of many photographic fields where they might be important, and strengthens a story, or particular mood.
To make great environmental portraits, we have a few tips that can help you create impactful images from interesting locations and people you meet on your travels.
Photo by Ali Khataw
What is an Environmental Portrait?
An environmental portrait is an image of a person in a given setting that helps to create a story of your chosen subject. Typical portrait images focus on the face and expressions, clothing, jewellery and distinguishing marks that make each profile different.
Environmental portraits are typically captured wider than headshots as to include parts of the surrounding environment. They can be shot off the cuff in a documentary-style shoot, or the subjects and settings can be meticulously arranged for the best possible image to complete a brief or idea.
Such images can work as lifestyle photography shoots where an apparel or jewellery brand can create stronger scenes for use in editorials for magazines. For travel or documentary briefs, other photographers show the situations people in the world face, providing interesting information about how and where people live.
The environments shown depict the interior or exterior of a home, a workplace, a form of transport or anything that places the person being photographed. By including an environment in your portrait shots, you create more interesting images.
Photo by Marcel Egger
What Can You do to Capture a Great Environmental Portrait?
Mute Distracting Backgrounds
An environmental portrait needs to show a subject in a setting that connects to them and helps to tell a story. The subject needs to be the focus of the image, while the environment helps to backup or affirm the intended story or mood, making the overall portrait stronger. The setting in which you shoot doesn’t need to be perfectly focused or sharp. By muting the background elements, you ensure the person is the most important element in the scene.
Photo by Jeff Lebowski
Use Subjects at Different Distances
An environmental portrait focuses on the face of a person in an interesting setting that communicates something about the subject. There can be more than one face or portrait in the scene. Adding more people in a scene can make your images stronger. This is especially true if these faces are at different distances from the camera. This sense of depth helps to remind the viewer that they are looking at a real, three-dimensional place and making it more interesting through a more realistic setting, situation and story.
Photo by Shady Essam
Use Repetition
The rules of composition in photography allow a scene to be made more interesting, and environmental portraits are no different. Compositions such as repetition are pleasing to the eye as we are programmed to notice patterns. Patterns are interesting as the entire universe is nothing more than random chaos. In a visual image, patterns stand-out. By looking for and utilising patterns, you steal the viewer’s attention. Breaking this rule of repetition takes it to another level. By adding a random, singular element, you create chaos in a scene of order in a world of chaos.
Photo by Asghar Asem
Keep the Scene Simple
As a beginner photographer, or new to portraiture, you might think you need to find complex scenes for your environmental portraits. It’s easy to believe they are the ones that will gather the most attention and comments. Photography, like many similar art forms, are strongest when at their most simple. You can create beautiful striking environmental portraits by stripping away the complex and keeping the scene simple. This way, the focus is placed on the subject in front of the camera. The environment in the background adds information that creates a story, which in turn makes the portrait stronger.
Photo by Vladimir Karamazov
Mix Humans and Animals
You can't have an environmental portrait without a human face, but that doesn’t mean you can’t include animals into the scene. There are a few reasons why this is something that could help make your images more interesting, and therefore, visually stronger. Beasts and creatures together strengthen the story and mood surrounding the portrait. It does so by adding more information, but leaving it open enough for the viewer to bring their own ideas to the scene. They can help to humanise the main subject of the environmental portrait and add an element of nature and wildlife to a typical portrait image. The more unusual and interesting the creature, the more interest the viewers will have in your image.
Photo by Roberto Pazzi
Ensure the Environment has Something to Say
Environmental portrait images are usually taken in a way to show the setting around the person you are capturing. This environment adds something extra to the portrait, such as a living condition, a work situation or an area in a different part of the world. This environment has to say something, otherwise, you have a portrait that should have a tighter crop. The setting where you shoot your subject can fall under a landscape, nature, urban or interior setting. But without interesting elements, simple or complex, the portrait will suffer and you’ll lose out on well-deserved attention.
Photo by Roberto Pazzi
Look for Colour
Colour is a very strong rule of composition. Bright colours attract attention like bees to flowers. Even subdued and desaturated colours can work well if they fit the theme and feel of the scene. If you can, go for a single, strong colour in a sea of subdued tones. This can help pull the viewers’ attention where you want it. You can also use the idea of complementary or contrasting colours to create feelings in the scene that can add strength to the environmental portrait.
Photo by Hosein Riahi
Try Black and White
Many photographers choose not to shoot in black and white. Some see it as an easy-way-out to magically make an image look better. Or they simply don’t know how to get the best out of their image without colour. Black and white photography can have a very strong impact on environmental portraits as they place more focus on contrast, texture and form. You will need to go into the photography shoot with this in mind so you can make the best of any given setting. By reducing the colour, you minimize distractions, and it could be the step that makes your environmental portraits stronger and more interesting.
Photo by Zoran Toldi
Environmental portraits can be your family in your back garden, local nature spot; even waiting for the bus just around the corner. You don’t need to book a flight to Tanzania to make an impactful image. Sure, it might be interesting, but get it correct before jumping on a long flight. Follow these tips above for guidelines toward making your images more interesting. Above all, keep it simple, have fun and experiment.