Normally, Portrait Photography shows the dominance of the subject’s face on the frame. It aims to show the subject’s character facial features and expression. Ideally, portraits are shot with a lens at least 85mm (on a 35mm equivalent) long on wide apertures at least f2.8 to flatten out the perspective and separate the subject from the background with at least beautiful enough bokeh (or background blur).
But there is another type of discipline under portraiture used a lot by Travel, Documentary, Fashion and even Pet Photographers which is Environmental Portraiture. The objective of Environmental Portraits is to show the subject and include enough necessary details of the environment to give more character, mood and story to the photo.
For this, we need a wider perspective than the usual 85mm. After getting my Lumix 20mm f1.7 pancake lens paired with my Olympus E-PL1, I’ve been experimenting on Environmental Portraits lately. Though I’ve been doing this type of portraits on my travel with my zoom lenses, I saw the natural and unforced look this lens produced. The 20mm (which is 40mm equivalent on 35mm) is closer to the “standard” or “normal” lens closer to the eye’s vision. And its fast f1.7 aperture produces beautiful enough background blur on natural light. Now I know why old school photographers still cherish their 50mm primes than their zooms.
Here are samples from around the house with my niece, little Alexa and some friends during a wedding we attended at Sonya’s Garden, Tagaytay. All of them were taken hand-held with natural light. I hope to do more environmental portraits with this lens as an ongoing project.
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