I recently got a flood of questions via Twitter asking about developing a personal photographic style, which made me think about a million conversations I’ve had with my photographer buddies over the years… And I was wishing I had recorded those. And then I remembered that I DID have one that I recorded from an old chasejarvis LIVE with my pal Zack Arias. He’s a fun guy, great shooter and very talented photography instructor. Here’s a few nuggets from our banter (plucked from the middle of the conversation and transcribed…) about developing personal photographic style…
CJ: Tell me the first time you realized that you actually had a style. Because for me, I can’t believe that you can take pictures for as long as it took me to take pictures before I actually could say that I have a style. Do you remember when that moment was for you?
ZA: I’d say it was probably just a couple of years ago. I’ve been pursuing this… If I count going to school and assisting and managing a studio, and trying to get my freelance career going, and then failing miserably, and then restarting it, that’s been about fifteen years. And I’d say…
CJ: Is that where the gray came from?
ZA: Yeah. That’s where the gray and all the kids, one of which you can hear in the background. Hawk is in the audience here. I guess in just the last couple of years I could finally sort of sit back and go, huh, this is what I do and this is how I do it and this is how I approach photography and this is kind of my style.
CJ: But it took a long time.
ZA: Yeah. Style is something that takes a long, long, long time and it takes; really, what it takes is shooting and just doing it over and over and over. It has to just develop and you can think you’re sort of on like when I started in photography, I thought I knew where I was going with my photography and how I would shoot. But that changed and I’d go down a different route and that would change and even just as last year, I was trying to break out of how I shoot things, do things differently and what I found that was most successful was just to go back to doing what I do and just kind of sticking with it. Every year, I seem to try to push my style and every year I fail pretty miserably doing that. And it’s just one of those I need to learn slowly and just slowly move forward.
CJ: If you try and develop a style from your living room, it’s unlikely that you’re going to and a lot of people, like, oh, when do you know when you got a style? You don’t know until you look back six months or a year or two years and say, oh, wow.
ZA: Or ten years or a decade. And at the beginning, you’re usually kind of replicating someone else’s style.
CJ: Right and imitation, that’s a great way of learning.
ZA: And that’s part of it. I replicated all the magazine photographers that I followed. I went out and shot just like them. I learned how they did it, but I had to get moving on from that….
If you want more, the entire video conversation is here.
Well said but it takes lots of imagination and wild thoughts to do it.
I always wanted to avoid having a set “style” because, let’s face it, a style means at least some kind of repetitive element in one’s work. I always wanted every project to be unique in pretty much every way possible and finding new solutions instead of resorting to the same way of shooting something all the time. I realize that every photograher and every artist has a unique way of looking at things, and I am aware that a style is essential for getting professional work so that prospective clients can roughly see what they would get if they hire me, but still, I don’t like it at all if someone can pull out a single photo of mine and say “This is so cool, all of his work kinda has this unique feel to it”. I simply don’t like it if someone can sum up my work or my point of view in any way.
Trouble is, it was only recently that I realized how much of a “style” I had actually developed over time when I saw photos from somebody else who had attempted to copy the aesthetic (subject selection, composition, perspective, angles, light, exposure, everything) of some of my images I usually take at some regular event I do as a side project. That was kind of weird. I’m not really sure whether to count that sort of thing as a success or as a failure.
Interesting discussion – I found myself thinking about developing a style recently whilst revamping my portfolio site. It’s funny to see how what you think is ‘your’ style change through the years.
TYPING ERROR!! Zack Arias does ROCK!
Zack Arias Dose rock! He is amazing! Thank for sharing! I am sill working on my style!