Challenge - Second Week of April 2015 - Environmental Portrait
This week's challenge was *puts on National Geographic voice* the artist in his natural habitat. *Ahem* Anyway, the point of this challenge was to photograph me in my surroundings in a way that was indicative of my actual work environment. Basically an environmental self portrait and by basically, I mean that's exactly what it is. Coming up with something other than, 'hey look, a picture of my desk' was a little more challenging than I thought it would be. I had a couple of different ideas in my head of where I wanted to take them, but ended up with mixed results.
I knew I wanted that wide angle view of my desk with the lights and my bookshelf, which I colloquially refer to as the character cube due to all of the cool little "characters" in it. I wanted an interesting angle, not something you'd normally see if you'd walk into the room. Then I looked up. Shooting from high above gave a really cool composition that got me all excited to shoot more. So then I took the high up, wide angle idea and applied it to a different shot. This time around I actually had myself in the photo instead of just capturing my surroundings. Unfortunately, that shot didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to...or so I thought. I woke up the next day and reviewed the photos and it was instantly my favorite of the bunch. I'm glad I ended up not deleting it. So let that be a lesson to anyone out there, always give it time to settle in. Wait until the next day before judging the photo, you might be pleasantly surprised. =)
That being said, the rest of the shots didn't do it for me. I tried going for some photos of me at my desk actually, you know, working, but they didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped they would. One of the photos was of me looking through some prints picking out which I liked better, but I decided to scrap that idea after I just couldn't get it to feel right. Another shot, which I'm still on the fence about, is of me editing a photo in photoshop. I'm actually editing the photo from earlier for this challenge in the photo. Kind of meta. So that was what I ended up getting from this challenge. Environmental portraits like these are a really cool way to show what your or your brand is all about. They work really well in a company bio page too ;). Next week I'll have another challenge up (hopefully on time). If any of you out there have any awesome environmental portraits that you'd like to share or just photos of your work area, then post a link the comments below. I love seeing how creative other people can get with stuff like this.
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