How to Find Your Personal Style in Photography
The concept of personal style is a fundamental topic in all art, not just photography. Everyone has their own way of seeing the world, and everything that people create is based upon this underlying uniqueness. In terms of photography, though, even mentioning personal style can seem strange — since our work is inherently based upon the real world, is it even possible to have a unique style? This question is especially relevant for fields like landscape and wildlife photography, which often rely 100% on the scene that nature presents to you, rather than any elements you add yourself. How can you insert your own personality into an image that mirrors the way the world actually looked at one point in time? It’s a complex question. Things get even trickier if you look into all the features that must be copied perfectly in order to produce a convincing forgery (or a benign imitation) of another photographer’s personal style — and, even further, the implications of analyzing and imitating your own personal style. In this article, we will explore the topic of personal style and how you can find it in your photography.
This article delves into all the complexities of personal style. I chose to divide them in three sections simply because I think this topic is best approached in chunks, with time to think in between, rather than all at once.
Here’s how the three parts are divided:
Defining personal style and the elements that combine to form one.
Discussing the differences between method and personality in your style.
Explaining the reasons to seek out a personal style, or avoid one.
Stars raining over the Southern Alps, New Zealand NIKON D800E + 70-200mm f/4 @ 86mm, ISO 100, 136 seconds, f/5.6