On Developing a Style

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out”.  Dr Seuss.

So how do we develop a Style? All Artists and Musicians study the Masters of their craft. They imitate and copy just like Picasso did with Raphael, but at some point they have to find their own voice. Otherwise they end up like musicians playing covers their entire lives. No one is completely original.. we don’t exist in a vacuum. So by all means look at images by people you admire and see if you can emulate them but only up to a point, then you have to add something of yourself to your images and to this genre.

The best way to develop a style is to let it find you. After you have been photographing at Street for a period of time, (for me it was between 6-12 months),  a style will emerge, you will see certain traits in your work.

It is easy to take an image that has high impact, and it is easy to take the same type of image again and again. People call this a style. To me it is boring!! So I will continue to experiment, make fabulous failures that will never see the light of day and start over, again and again.

Your style should always be evolving. If you are popular for taking images of puddles for instance and then you take more images of the same. You stagnate and your creativity will die. If you are always posting to please other people you become a slave to the social media stream. Instead, if you keep people guessing then you are in charge of your own destiny. So Zig when they expect you to Zag. That doesn’t mean you have to switch genres, if Street is your thing then stay where your interest lies. But if creating Abstract Images makes you happy by all means take these images, and incorporate them into your style.