Environmental Portraiture: Tell Your Subject’s Story and Create Dynamic Portraits with One Bag of Gear

Graphic elements

If you look around any building, you’ll see lines aplenty. The design of commercial office buildings and complexes often includes series of repeating lines, such as flagpoles, flowerbeds, bike racks, exterior windows, or cubicles. Long lenses help accentuate the repetition, as they appear to compress the distance between objects because you are shooting from farther away. For instance, when you shoot down a row of columns with a long lens, those columns will look stacked up on one another. The repeating lines create movement and direction in a photo, leading the viewer right to the person.

While looking for a place to photograph ...