Introduction

With lenses like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM, Sigma 35mm 1.2 Art DG DN, Laowa 35mm 0.95 Argus and the Sony FE 50mm 1.2 GM in the E-mount lens lineup and the ongoing Instragram hype it might be a good time to talk a bit about environmental portraits.
What is an environmental portrait and what is the difference compared to a normal portrait? Which lenses work best? Which mistakes I made in the past but you can already avoid today?
These are the questions I will try to answer in this article.

What makes a portrait environmental?

In a normal portrait you want to direct all of the viewer’s attention to your subject/model. So often people use fast (longer) lenses and look for non distracting backgrounds to achieve this, as I did in this example:

You don’t know where the shot has been taken and the background does not give you any further information or points of interest that could distract from the model.

In an environmental portrait on the other hand you want to include the background, you want it to have some points of interest and in the best case it will give the viewer some additional information on the subject, as in this example:

This is one also features a half body framing just as the one above, but the inclusion of the background tells you the subject is probably a butcher. You might also get an idea where the shot has been taken. This could just as well be categorized as street photography, in fact there is a huge overlap between street photography and environmental portraits.

One of the major differentiators for most will probably be, that while most streetphotography is unstaged an environmental portrait easily can be staged. The subject usually knows a picture will be taken and might even have been directed to give the best artistic result, often not possible (or even desired) in streetphotography.
This is a staged environmental portrait in the style that is popular on Instagram (these are also sometimes referred to as “Figure in Landscape”):

To me an environmental portrait is most successful and has most visual impact when it tells a story. I think the following picture is a good example: in the background you see Big Ben and the houses of parliament, so obviously you are in London, right at the Thames. The person sitting here wears a thick hat and has his hands buried in his pockets, so it must be a cold day. He interacts with the scene as despite the cold he decided to sit down here and watch one of the landmarks of London during sunset.
It almost makes you feel the cold wind and the moist air at the Thames, especially when you have already been there in person before.

This is, what in my opinion environmental portraits are all about: telling a story.

What lenses work best?

Most people will probably say: fast wide angle lenses (24mm f/1.4 or 35mm f/1.4). While I agree in a way this is not a hard rule and many other lenses worked well for me in the past, so I will talk about different focal length ranges and what I think they work best for. I will mainly talk about taking pictures of grown humans here first, at the end there is an additional chapter about children and animals.

9-21mm: Ultra Wide Instagram Shots

Lenses in the ~17-21mm range work well for panoramic, scenic Instagram style shots where your subject is rather small in the frame. In indoor situations these focal lengths also let the surroundings appear bigger than they actually are.

With these lenses you have to watch out for perspective distortion and you should keep some distance to your subject as well. If you want to straighten the verticals you should keep in mind to leave some room for that when deciding on your framing. You can even use 17-24mm Shift lenses for that.

With lenses this wide (even talking about faster ones like the Sigma 1.8/14 or the Laowa 2/15) you will rarely have any visibly out of focus backgrounds though and you probably want to keep your subject close to the center of the frame, so it won’t be perspectively distorted.

Notable lenses:
As lens speed is not overly important most wide angle lenses work for these kind of applications, you probably already have one that is well suited, but you can also have a look at our Ultrawide angle lenses for A7 series cameras or Wideangle lenses for A7 series cameras guides.

24-40mm with f/0.95-1.8: Environmental portraits with 3D effect

These are the lenses usually recommended for this task. They are wide enough to include the scenery yet fast enough to at least slightly blur the background, which adds to the feeling of depth (or gives a 3D effect, as many people like to put it).

In my opinion, a fast 28 or 35 is best suited for this task and the faster the better, this is why ma favorite lenses here are the Laowa 35mm 0.95 Argus and the Sigma 35mm 1.2 Art DG DN.

Already with the Voigtlander 35mm 1.7, when taking a full body environmental portrait, the background is only barely out of focus. With the RX1RII (35mm 2.0) it will be even harder and I am sure this is part of the reason many people are not overly happy with the 35mm 2.8 offerings.

Good thing about 35s: you can already place your subject closer to the border of the frame withoug getting noticeable, distracting distortions.

Now with a 24mm f/1.4 like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM you can go a little closer to your subject for having a full body framing and you will have more background in the frame that also looks slightly more out of focus – maximum aperture being equal. But this comes at a price: more and sometimes noticeable perspective distortion.
To get nice bokeh with a 24mm 1.4 I was always tempted to go a little closer, but this is not a good idea and will often lead to big noses or too small looking bodies and arms.

Notable lenses:

• Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM
• Laowa 28mm 1.2 Argus
• Thypoch Simera 28mm 1.4
• 7artisans 28mm 1.4 FE+
• Laowa 35mm 0.95 Argus
• Sigma Art 35mm 1.2
• Voigtlander 40mm 1.2 Nokton E

Here I prefer lenses with smooth, undistracting bokeh rendering. Many of the older designs (and also the Voigtlander 35mm 1.4 E Classic) therefore don’t qualify.

50mm and longer: the more intimate environmental portraits

Depending on your distance to the subject or the surroundings a 50mm lens will still yield nice environmental portraits, but obviously you loose a bit of that wide angle look often associated with them.

Personally I also like using fast 85mm lenses like the Sony FE 85mm 1.4 GM a lot for environmental portraits lately, as even for full body framing it yields more bokeh than the wider options:

Notable lenses:
Zhong Yi Mitakon 50mm 0.95
Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton
Sony FE 50mm 1.2 GM
Voigtländer 50mm 1.2E Nokton
Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX
Sony FE 85mm 1.4 GM
and many more

What about using Bokehpanoramas/Brenizer?

To combine the higher amount and the better quality of the bokeh of a longer lens with the framing of a wide angle lens many people like to use the Bokehpanorama/Brenizer technique. This can be used to great effect, but takes time and practice and won’t work in every situation.

Special case: Animals and (small) Children

Our eyes and perception are very well trained when it comes to grown humans, so we easily spot distorted faces, big noses and such when using wide angle lenses.
In my experience this is less so the case when taking pictures of smaller children, especially babies, and animals like dogs or cats.
You can use a fast wide angle lens like a 24mm 1.4 or 35mm 1.4, stick it close to their face and the shots will look cute and adorable instead of obviously distorted.
Also: for a full body shot of a child you can go much closer compared to an adult, giving you more and nicer bokeh.

Round Up

I hope you found this article helpful (or at least entertaining) and now know what environmental portraits are all about and what to watch out for. If not, do not hesitate to ask.
You are also invited to share your environmental portraits in the comments, if you want to see more of mine, I dedicated this topic a flickr album.

Other Articles

• How to: Taking better pictures?
• Our Guide to FE lenses
• All Lens Reviews
• Analogue Adventures
• Technical Knowledge

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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