Howzit howzit!
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If I think back to when I started taking photography seriously, I felt that I needed to be 100% original in my images.
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I made a serious mistake in how I looked at the work of photographers whose photos I enjoyed.
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As far as I was concerned, I needed a style in my photography and that style had to be something no one had ever seen before.
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Yup, the arrogance of youth.
Nothing quite like the overblown ego of an art student to make his future self cringe!
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Though to be honest, it wasn’t really a know-it-all mindset that was the problem, but something about which I was reminded about last week.
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A reader called Scott wrote to me about finding a voice in photography. In his email, he shared what I know is a common issue with a lot of creatives.
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​“The wall I've been hitting is finding my voice so to speak. Do I have my own style or am I just mimicking others? I watch a lot of videos, tutorials, advice channels, and read articles about finding your style or niche.

Only I don't know what I'm looking for and after a while, all the voices just become noise in the void. This also contributes to the difficulty of figuring out what is my style or if am I just parroting someone else's.
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I get inspired by others but I still don't feel like I have a style or look yet. Maybe I'm putting too much importance on that?”

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Such a lot of noise is made about finding your own style in photography, and that's natural. I get it, I felt the same way.

“serious” photographers, at least in my mind, were unique they had their own distinctive Style.
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Before we go any further I think we need to clarify something about Style:
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The idea that you would know when you had ‘created’ a style.
That there would be some definitive point where you go - yes, I have a style.
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There isn’t.
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The truth is that while other people say that I have a style in my photographs I would be hard-pressed to tell you what that style is. And I certainly didn’t have some light bulb moments about it either.
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It just sort of happened.
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This is why it is so difficult when you watch all these tutorials and videos about finding a style. There isn't a definitive goal, there isn't a result you can work towards.

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It is simply an ongoing process.​
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That leads me to probably the most important aspect of finding a style - this confusion about mimicry versus experimentation.

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Recently I did a video interview with Tyler Shields. A somewhat controversial American art photographer. A lot of the criticism that has been leveled against Tyler is that his work is often just a blatant copy of work that has been created before.
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This is not entirely unfounded when you look at his photography, sure there are echoes of many photographers from the past.

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But what I feel he does, which most photographers do quite frankly, even if they aren’t consciously aware of it, is to take these influences and combine them.
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This makes his photography have a style. It’s what makes your photographs have a style that is yours. It’s just hiding under a lot of gumpf.
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If Tyler just copied shot for shot the work of one photographer then that is a mimicry.
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When you're looking at your own photography, if you feel you want just to copy one photographer's work over and over again then you are yes just simply mimicking what they do.
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If however you copy a certain photographer's work and you get to understand their thought processes, and then do the same with a number of other photographers' body of work, then you are experimenting and developing your own artistic voice.
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You only have to walk around an art gallery in a museum to see all those aren't students sitting and sketching the paintings on the wall. This is them copying the work of the Greats in an effort to find a style and an approach that they can incorporate into their own work.

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I've mentioned previously how in the authentic vision framework course, one of the first exercises is to Spring Clean the ideas in your mind that have surfaced about photography.
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We get told so much about how we should do things and the right way to take photographs.
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What I get when thinking about style in photography is that often the photographers for me who have the most distinctive Style are the ones who don't seem to follow any convention.

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If you are searching and looking to create a style of your own in photography you must be willing to challenge conventions if they don't sit well with you.
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People get hung up on style far too much and forget what they should be really aiming for in photography - and that is to simply take images that feel natural to them, in the best way they can.
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In your own photography think about times you've taken a picture because you were told that was what you had to photograph or you took it in a certain way because again you were told that was the right way but it didn't quite sit with you properly.
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The more that you listen to that voice the more that you take inspiration from things that really inspire you the more that you don't overthink your images the more authentic they will be.
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It was great to hear from Scott and all the other's who've written in. Thank you all so very much.
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If there's a specific topic you'd like to see covered here, or just want to say hi - please drop me a line.
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Thanks so much
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Alex