Our latest assignment was to take two different types of portraits: environmental portraits and portrait eyes. This was my favorite photo assignment because it had more of a human element than the last ones. I thought that it would be awkward to take portraits of people, and it was at first. Once I told them that their portrait was for a class assignment, they were more willing to have their photo taken, though they often insisted on arranging themselves. When looking through my contact sheet, I found that the best pictures were the ones where the subject did not take a while to arrange themselves, but rather just smiled and behaved naturally.
There were two types of portraits that I was taking: environmental portraits and portrait eyes. The assignment called for two good photos of each kind. The difference between a portrait and a snapshot is that the subject is usually aware of the photographer in a portrait, and that they have a connection. In a snapshot, the subject or subjects might not be aware of the photographer.
Portrait Eyes: For a photo to qualify as portrait eyes, the subject must be making eye contact with the photographer and be looking into the camera. I personally preferred these to the environmental portraits because their faces tended to portray more emotion and allowed for more detail in their faces, especially their eyes.
For both of my portrait eyes photographs I had to burn the background because they were too light and so that they wouldn’t be too distracting and take away from the subjects. I chose both of these pictures because you can see a lot of detail in their faces and in their eyes and expressions as well as the clarity of the photographs themselves.
Environmental Portraits: Environmental portraits are when the background or environment of the subject is important to the photo. In portrait eyes, the background can be blurred or indistinct, so that it doesn’t really add to the photo at all. The environment in environmental portraits adds to the understanding, character, or story of the photograph.
For the first environmental, I used cyan to bring out the shadows around the subjects and then burned the bottom right corner. What I like about this picture is the contrast between the color of their shirts and hair, but the balance of their pose and the pots in their hands.
The second environmental portrait is one of my favorites because he was really excited to have is picture taken. The bottom part of the photo was burned because it was too white and distracting.
