This is Sid, one of my friends that I've met while studying abroad at Purdue this year. I decided to take some environmental portraits of him on the court. We often play basketball at the 'co-rec' in the evenings after classes so I thought this would be a good location to capture an aspect of his character. I had pre-envisioned a very symmetrical image of Sid in the centre of frame. So when we got there I positioned him just in front of the 3-point line. This image consists of four speed lights; one on the floor facing the hoop and backboard, another acting as ‘hair light’ facing Sid’s head, another to the right of frame providing some ‘fill light’ and my main key light with a soft box to the left of frame. I like the final image because the lighting makes Sid ‘pop out’ from the background. He mentioned before hand that he found it hard to smile on camera, so I waited until we were both laughing naturally and I captured the moment. Even though Sid doesn’t usually smile on camera, he is a happy and smiley person in everyday life so I thought it was important to show that in the above image.

From my perspective Sid (the person in the middle) is a really ‘cool’ person. I mean that in the sense of the way he ‘carries’ himself, his mannerisms and his jokes. He never seems stressed about classwork or other things; he just tries to enjoy life and this experience of being at Uni. He has a presence of not being ‘loud’ but still remaining to be present and sometimes the centre of attention. So I decided to photograph Sid the way that I see him. He was studying on the sofa (as he frequently does) when I asked him if I could photograph him. I closed the blinds to simplify the shot and remove any distractions from outside that may detract from him. Then placed one speed light behind his head to separate him somewhat from the background. As our friends were working on alongside him I lit them first with dim lighting on either side of the frame to give a even yet muted feel. Finally I placed my raised key light on a tall light stand next to my camera was in the middle of frame. I made sure that this light was noticeably more powerful than the two either side of Sid so that he would be the main focus. During the edit I chose black and white because it was what I had envisioned in my mind before hand. My reasoning was that I wanted fairly even tones throughout with a focus on Sid in the middle. I enjoyed shooting these images, I liked the challenge of trying to capture an aspect of my friend in an image so that if anybody else looks looks at this series, they'll get a feel of Sid's character.

Environmental Portrait Session with Sid