This portrait tells us what it must feel like to water flowers all day in a Chengdu flower shop. In the face and body language of this worker I saw exhaustion, resignation, and tedium. I created the frame of my picture out of the shop's doorway and sign, and waited for her to spontaneously arrange herself within it. I call this kind of image an environmental portrait, because the setting is as important to meaning as the subject. In this case, the watering can, the plants arrayed behind, and the sign, which identifies the store as a flower shop in Chinese, provide critical context for meaning. She did not pose for me – she simply went about her work, and after awhile she seemed to forget that I was even there. That was when I was able to make this portrait work as an expressive message.