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I love using the 24mm lens for environmental portraits or group shots. Often when I'm traveling, I encounter a working or living environment so visually interesting that I want to incorporate it into the composition of the portrait. The idea is to portray not only the individual, but also what's important to this person's life. It can be a farmer working with a plow horse, a gardener planting her flowers, or a fisherman repairing a lobster trap.
When including a person's environment, it's important to pay attention to the background and be sure that it doesn't compare with the subject or distract in any way. Take your time and avoid including unwanted elements. Also, you may want to shoot both vertically and horizontally for more variety in your images.
After you determine your lighting and background, look through the viewfinder and wait for your subjects to assume different poses. In order to elicit great expressions and help them relax, I talk to my subjects while I photograph them. I prefer to let them fall into their own poses and direct them a little only when I feel it's absolutely necessary. Judt the idea that I want to take their picture will often lead to laughter and natural smiles.
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