Defining your personal style

[DragonflyDM]

I was having a discussion on "style" and I thought I would share my thoughts I had in that conversation.

Style is simple. So simple that it is hard. I just dealt with this with a 30 year old photographer who has been shooting for over ten years professionally.

He called me up and asked," Josh, I want to do something with my studio portraits to really make them stand out. Do you know of any websites I can look at of amazing portraits?"

"Do you want to make great portraits?"

"Yes."

"Look at that family in your mind, and tell me what you want their photos to say."

"I want it to say, 'Wow, that is great.'"

"That is the result you want. You won't get it by shooting for the reaction. Mark Twain didn't say, 'Hey, I want to write a story that people are going to be wowed by' and then wrote "Tom Sawyer." He wrote Tom Sawyer, because he had a voice inside him that had something to say, and then put the words down on paper to accomplish his goal."

"But I want my pictures to really pop!"

"Stop worrying about the reaction. You can't get the reaction without the message. If you just copy someone else's image you are just mimicking. If you know what you want your image to say, then I can help you do the technical stuff to get there. Otherwise, you are just snapping images."

That is the heart of style. It is looking at your subject, and having something to say about it. In photography, it has to do with mastering the craft of painting with light, and then using that skill to create your message.

A sculptor is not as fortunate as we are. We can snap a 1,000 images and hopefully stumble across a random thought in the bunch that stands out to us. This is what I call subconscious making of art, because we rely on our reactionary mind to capture a story. Sculptors have to look at the rough ashlar stone and see the image first. They have to find the message first. They do not have the luxury to carve 9 sculptures a second and choose the right one. They have to work the stone with their skill purposefully.

Style is about purposeful shooting. It is being awake to your subject and how they relate to their environment and realizing that you are part of that environment. It is about shooting with both eyes and your mind open so that you are able to converse with your subject on an artistic basis.

If you have nothing to say, then you are a technician. If you are not skilled in your craft, then (at best) you are a mimick, and no matter how great the image, you will never be happy; because you are not creating art, but performing a karaoke version of photography.


----------- Pt II

One of the difficulties in finding "your style" is definitely having something to say.

Most of us suffer from "monkey mind." Our heads are filled with so many voices. We drive while we shave, listen to the radio, make phone calls. We surf the Internet with the TV on, and holding a conversation with our spouses. Our minds are never at rest as we become data whores. We will cuddle up to any media that does allow us to think.

When we turn off all the noise? There is our monkey mind. Ideas hoping from limb to limb. We think about our past. We plan our future. We wonder if the laundry is done. It is deafening to hear that monkey chatter.

When we ask what WE THINK, we can't answer. We don't know because we can't focus. Monkey mind. Then comes the other monkeys: doubt, pride, impatience.

We don't' think we are good enough to have something to say. We would rather look for an easier path or mimicry because it seems safer than hurting our pride if someone doesn't like our work. We don't have time to figure it all out.

We complain that we can't find our style, but we don't quiet our monkeys to hear our voice and figure out what we want to say.

Spend time before you shoot to listen. Listen to your clients. If your mind is plotting while they speak-- stop it. You aren't listening, you are filtering! Listen to them. Then question yourself (in a quiet place), what is it they want? What is it I can do to make that happen? What do I want my images to say.

When I teach photography and writing, I tell my students that all art comes down to one statement. Every movie can be deconstructed to a theme. Every story is a sentence expanded. Every photo is a single thought.

Quiet your mind, and listen to the thought your client wants. Listen to yourself and hear what theme you want your photos to have. Figure out how to bring those two thoughts into one unified thought.

The rest is all technical "how to," which is really simple.

I think of photography like a journey. If you know where you want to go, it is a lot easier to get there. But if you let the monkeys in your mind chatter, or drown out your thoughts with all that media noise-- you will never hear yourself think. You will never hear your own voice. You will never find your own style.

[Luke_Miller]

Very thought provoking. Thanks for posting. "Monkey mind" - I love it!

[Peter Gregg]

Wow, you have a lot to say about style

The trouble with style is where you (generic "you") are at in your photography career. If you are at the beginning, like children mimic their parents (except for the parents that say "do what I say and not what I do") it might be a good idea to find someone who you want "to be like when you grow up" and start learning by mimicking to get your craft down.

But when you are grown and an adult, you put away childish things as they say, and start going down your own course. I say that because I don't think I would be comfortable telling someone to do their own thing when they don't even know the basics first. i know photographers that only want to BREAK the rules and call it art - but they don't even know the rules to break so it becomes more of a hit & miss rather than a craft.

That's my argument on the one hand. On the other hand, if one has nothing to say from their own heart, then like you said, it's a technician and nothing more. We have that in the car world. There is a huge difference between a real "mechanic" and a "parts changer". The unfortunate part, is my Caddy dealer down the road seems to be full of "parts changers" I would LOVE to find a real mechanic.

So I guess my opinion on what you wrote would be, depending on what stage of a career life a person is at, is more or less defining what part of your wonderful though provoking stage they should be at. Certain goals can be archived at different stages of expertise. Only my opinion here

Peter

[ChrisPerry]

Good stuff there Josh, as always. I agree with you. Most of us have someone whose work we admire. We want to 'be like them'. It's normal.Of all the classes and seminars I've taken each teacher has their own style, and that's pretty much what they teach (with a word or two about 'do what works for you') Never shoot below 1/125. I shoot as low as 1/4 second on formals. Always use a tripod. RAW or else. Drive mode and ambient light.

What works for you. That's a key statement there. Who among us doesn't have a closet full of stuff we bought but don't use beacause 'it doesn't work for me'? Flash modifiers are a common ones - lightsphere, omnibounce, demb flipit and about 100 more. You also have trends - be that because of new technology (spider lights) or seminars or some hot new photog on the scene with his own hot style that gets trumped up in all the magazines. In theory is should be easy to emulate the technical bits of someone's style but it ain't always easy to get the same results, to you move on to what works for you. I shot a sports league's T&I and I shot at F4. A competitor in this field shoots these at F11. Style? What works for me/him? A little of both.

It takes time to digest all the input from everyone and find what works for you - and then that becomes a key component of your style. Then you can begin thinking a bit more on the rest of your style if it hasn't already surfaced. At times I feel more like a custom cabinet maker rather than a sculptor - a sculptor can make what he wants with little care about client input. I, on the other hand, make everything once I am commissioned to do so and feel an obligation to make what the client asked for.
"Shoot what you love and the clients will find you" is certainly true, but had I shot all the T&I like I shoot a wedding, well, I'd have hundreds of new 'art owners' mad at me

[DragonflyDM]

-------- shooting your style as a hired gun --------

Well, you can take any argument to the extreme so that it no longer applies. And when you are working for someone else, you have to always remember that you are providing a service AS WELL AS shooting in your style-- so you have to mix a bit of both.

I am the managing editor of a national magazine. My boss (who is not a writer or has any experience in writing, editing, publishing, etc) has come a few times behind me and told me to make changes that are just silly. In the end-- I have to swallow the stone and go with the pay check.

The original phrase is "the customer is never wrong" (it is an important difference from the version we say today). So when I shoot, I try to stay true to what I feel is "my style"; however, there are times I just have to be a photo-whore and shoot for the money.

Those moments don't count towards style.

------ copying people --------
When I first started shooting, I tried to copy photographers that I liked. When I first started painting (as a hobby) I did the same thing. There are a few things I learned right away.

I discovered quickly that copying is a great way to learn, but a horrible way to define yourself. Mostly because your copies (like all copies) are not as good as the original. A photograph is a culmination of events (e.g. model, mood, inspiration, persperation, experience etc). Trying to recreate an image is like trying to realign the stars.

Meanwhile, I find that my style is trying to get out, but I supress it to copy what I think an image SHOULD look like.

This is where I feel that style should have a very zen approach. Let the moment be and trust your judgement. Then investigate the image and process and determine what "clicked" for you and what didn't.

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