Finding your style. Up for discussion.
I admire photographers who have developed a distinct style, maybe because it is something that for me seems hard to achieve. Since I started this photography journey, I’ve been exploring anything and everything, and I take pleasure in photographing any kind of subject. My final frames show rather the mood I am in than a distinct style. I am asking and I’ll focus on this for the next leg of my journey: How to achieve consistency? How to find your own style? And is this really necessary to become a successful photographer (and by successful I don’t mean a commercial photographer, but someone who becomes an inspiration for others)?
Achieving consistency and finding your style meet somewhere, but I guess consistency is just a step on the way to finding your style. What do you think? I’d love to hear your advice, thoughts. I’ll start exploring this myself and will share my thoughts as I go.
Just an illustration of two different ways of approaching a subject (The Traveling Man, stainless steel sculpture in Deep Ellum by Brad Oldham, Dallas).
Claudia Curici Photography 
Nice sculpture by the artist, and nice portraits by you 🙂
I’m not photographer but in general I consider the style a consequence of an obsession or passion. Kafka has this thing with the tragic infinite, Van Gogh with his paradoxical way to see intense worlds in the peaceful landscapes, in photography I think in Steve McCurry, that hunt for get the essence of life in one image… That search is what IMHO gets them consistency and style by consequence.
In opposition I rarely follow professionals photographers, because their style (and yes, they’ve a style) comes not from passion but from a method to get what customers want (wedding shots that appear to be film, portraits of homeless with ultra-sharpening, landscapes always in sunsets or blue hour, etcetera).
Perhaps it’s like love, it simply appears without need to be searched, and something we can see easily with the perspective of a lot of time to get a picture of what we have done naturally along a period of time.
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Hi Francis, very good points… I also think the style comes from something deep, a life philosophy, an obsessive search, a passion… and most probably you are right, that personal touch comes with time… Good point on delimitating a pure commercial style from art, although I still think there are many photographers (not that many, but still) who managed to be great commercial photographers and also produce art photography (or doing both in the same time). Looking forward to see where this journey brings me 🙂 And thanks for input, much appreciated (it’s nice feeling this blogging thing is a conversation, rather than a monologue) 🙂
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