Pop Photo Assignment: Environmental Portrait HOME

For some portraits, it makes sense to stick the 85mm lens on your camera, frame it up tight, and make a great photo. But other portraits need to tell more of a story. We recently ran a story with the awesome Brian Harkin, who gave us a pile of great tips for making portraits that put their subject into a context.

For this assignment, we want you to get out there and find someone interesting, then make a photo that tells their story. It could be a shop keeper in front of his wares, or a doll collector in front of her precious belongings. It could be anyone.

There are a few rules that make this different than our typical photo challenge, though:

1. You need to shoot the photo between now and November 15th. If you were a pro on assignment, you wouldn’t be able to dig into your archive and pull out your past work. The idea here is to get you inspired. Get the camera, find a person and make it happen.

2. You get one shot. Your entry is limited to a single photo. So, really look at your entry from corner to corner and make sure it says what you want it to say.

**The winner will be chosen by the PopPhoto.com staff and will receive a Lowepro Urban Reporter 350 camera bag worth $159. **

As the colder months approach, we know it’s harder to stay motivated behind the camera, but free stuff is the great motivator. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.