This afternoon I did another photo sessions for some friends who have a gorgeous 11 month old wee boy. I’ve done several photo sessions with him since he was a baby, and it’s been so interesting to document him growing and changing in his first year.

In today’s session, done at their home, I particularly wanted to practice shooting environmental portraits. As a portrait photographer it’s tempting to shoot everything at greater than 70mm and less than f4 because you’re almost guaranteed to get a great-looking portrait if you shoot tight and have a low depth of field.

I challenged myself by exclusively using my 17-40mm lens (often at 17mm) and tried to ‘pull back’ to include more of the environment. Photographing this way is great when you’re in the client’s environment, as you can use the surroundings to help tell the story of the person in the photograph. It’s definitely a lot more challenging shooting portraiture with a wider lens – you end up with a lot more ‘snapshot’ type images. The key is to really hone in on visual composition to get images with punch, rather than relying solely on razor-thin depth of field to add ‘wow’ factor.

If you like shooting portraiture but tend to follow the ‘shoot long, crop tight and stick to f2.8′ model, give yourself a challenge by shooting some portraiture using a wide-angle lens – it’s definitely a different skill set that’s worth developing.

Here’s a couple of my favourites from today – both make use of the extensive foreground to add story and context to the images.

About the Author

I'm a freelance photographer in Christchurch, New Zealand who does promotional & editorial portraiture, and commercial & advertising photography.