Why Creating Your Own Photographic Style Matters
Beyond making authors’ work recognizable, style is one of the most valuable assets any photographer can build. From a very personal standpoint, I think of style as a whole world which can be seen from a diverse range of perspectives. As a photography educator, it is beautiful to see how style starts to develop on my students. From the curatorial side of the game, it is extremely satisfying to see a photograph and say “that shot looks somewhat familiar, it reminds me of…” and yup, the name that I’m thinking of is sometimes the correct one. And from the shooting side of the scope, is a never-ending query.
Style is equally revered and feared by many new and not-so-new photographers. It is hard to build, and there is no exact recipe for achieving it either, but today I’ll be sharing some insightful thoughts about style that will hopefully make it easier for you.
Style isn’t Achieved in No Time
We live in times reigned and dominated by immediacy, therefore being patient about something is more difficult nowadays. You do have to keep this in mind because you won’t develop style in just a few days (nor even months). Building a consistent style takes years, and has more to do with the quality of the content we consume rather than showcasing our work.
This doesn’t apply to every photographer of course, but for many this will sound very familiar. One starts in photography by picking up a camera and discovering how it can register things and scenes that are in front of our eyes in a slightly different way we actually see. Bokeh amazes us, and we point our cameras pretty much to anything (especially flowers and door knobs, don’t know why, but it does happen like that in the majority of cases).
Style will start to bloom with time after a sufficient amount of practicing.
It is an Heterogeneous Amalgam
And speaking of the quality of content consumption, let’s talk a bit about aesthetics. The easiest way I have found for understanding the philosophical concept of “aesthetic” is by seeing it as the “ability” certain objects have to trigger our senses. There is no right or wrong here, as long as the content you consume is able to produce a great deal of pleasure in your mind, then it is good for you. In practical terms, content is made of pretty much anything, from movies to music, or paintings to sculptures, to even reading and of course seeing others’ photographs.
