Environmental Portraiture: A Complete Guide to the Portrait Photographer’s Most Powerful Imaging Tool

This unique book is a photographer’s guide to the powerful medium of the environmental portrait. It explores in lucid detail the many "moving parts" of this imaging style, including the techniques and creative processes that drive some of this genre’s finest contemporary practitioners.

In Environmental Portraiture, author Jim Cornfield puts his readers behind the viewfinder to help them successfully master what he calls "the portrait photographer’s most high-powered tool." In a series of detailed tutorial chapters and study models, Cornfield unpacks every practical aspect of the environmental portrait scenario, including research, location scouting, lighting interior and exterior environments, props and wardrobe, lens selection, composition, color, and after-capture.

Along with this wealth of comprehensive nuts-and-bolts information, the book probes the deep structure of environmental portraiture―the blend of a sitter’s backstory with the meaningful visual clues in their surroundings. He introduces such concepts as "portraitcraft," "cognitive weight," and "the ideas and emotions quotient," among the many dimensions of an environmental portrait that create eye-opening revelations about the person in front of your lens.

A separate section of the book is devoted to a prestigious roster of contemporary environmental portraitists, specifically recruited for this book to explore in-depth selected samples from their diverse portfolios. They bring with them a score of insights, tips and fascinating anecdotes that demonstrate their individualized approaches to this versatile branch of the photographer’s craft.

Written for professionals, amateurs and serious students of photography, this book is both a guide and inspiration to creating powerful, communicative environmental portraiture.

Jim Cornfield is a freelance journalist, editor, travel writer, and veteran commercial photographer, based in Malibu Canyon, CA. His adventure and eco-travel articles, covering destinations from Israel, India, Costa Rica, Spain, and Italy to Honduras, the Cayman Islands, and Portugal, are widely published in magazines, including Scientific American, AARP Magazine, Sport Diver, Scuba Diving, and Continental Air Lines Magazine. His articles on photography and photo technique regularly appear in New York-based Rangefinder for which he is a columnist and contributing writer. Over a career that spans nearly 40 years, Jim Cornfield has been Feature Editor of Petersen’s PhotoGraphic Magazine, Director of Photography for inflight magazine publisher East/West Network, and he was co-creator of the acclaimed book series, Masters of Contemporary Photography. His photographs are showcased in advertisements and corporate publications worldwide, for a clientele that includes NBC, CBS, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Tribune Broadcasting, Hewlett-Packard, Dole, AIG, Occidental Petroleum, and a gamut of periodicals including Reader's Digest, TV Guide, Los Angeles Magazine, Popular Photography and Oui. Cornfield is the author of five books and an experienced film and video director, having created many television commercials for his broadcasting clients. A native of Chicago, he was raised in suburban Los Angeles, graduated from UCLA and served four years as a commissioned officer in the US Air Force.