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Next week I'm opening up the next iteration of Creative Photo Mastery, the cohort that I periodically run (the next one starts mid-September), and as part of that launch, I've asked people to join the waitlist and share with me their biggest struggles in photography.
There’s a whole range of issues that people have highlighted - from technical struggles all the way through to slightly harder topics to quantify, like knowing if your work is good enough or not.
There are a few hurdles however that are common to a lot of people. One of those is this idea about finding a unique voice, a style if you want to call it that, in their photography
I thought if I share my own photographic journey with you then hopefully, it will give you an idea about how style actually comes about in your photography.
I do go into a bit more depth in this during the cohort, but figure that it is such a common problem that I'd discuss it here as well.
Firstly a word about what isn't style
A lot of people get confused when talking about style in photography. Certainly, there are photographers who look at style as a way that you process an image, or the type of lens that you use.
These are superficial touches that you're putting on your images.
I remember that used to be a poster up on my wall when as a teenager of a very famous motocross rider. He was wearing a 1970s John Travolta-looking dance outfit and the tagline said “Looks are only skin deep but style is to the bone”
This is where people are getting confused about style in photography.
It's not a look but the way that you photograph.
How I found my style (or more accurately, how it found me)
I've been taking photographs seriously (as in, photographing with intent to create a photo) for about four decades now.
Over that period I've seen thousands and thousands of photographs that have resonated with me. But also over that period I have read hundreds of tutorials about how to achieve various looks, and I've also fallen into this trap that I was trying to apply somebody else's idea of style to my own images.
It's important to know how to dissect a photograph that you enjoy, and to see how that photographer has put it together to get a deeper understanding of their creative process.
It's also important to understand how to use your equipment to its fullest capacity so that you can grease the wheels of getting the image from your mind into a format that you can share with someone.
One of my biggest hurdles, especially when I was younger, in taking photographs was that the approach which came naturally to me in regard to the composition and the way I approached photography, in general, was slightly at odds with what I thought I should be creating.
I was young, into music and going to Art School, I thought I needed to make photography that was “challenging”
I recall one of the worst pieces of feedback that I got at a critique. We'd had to take food photographs, and the image that I submitted was likened to a photograph out of Womans Own magazine. I was horrified, and for years tried to push any of that feeling out of my photography.
But in that piece of feedback was an element of Truth.
My style is actually quite formal in a certain respect. It’s what comes naturally to me, despite the fact that I wanted to be “out there”. However, this feel about my photography (my style) was hidden from me because I wasn't confident in my photography.
Over the years the more that I became confident in the technical aspect of photography, of being able to do the basics really well, this idea of a structured formal feel to my images, both in my portraiture and my personal photography started to surface.
I've purposely used the word feel here. My personal photography and my portrait photography look very different. There isn't a specific visual element that holds all of my images together - some are color some are black and white some are in a square format some are in 4:3
But if you were to spend some time looking at my photographs you start to get a feel for what an Alex Kilbee photograph is.
In your own photography are there ideas, approaches, and ways of photographing that seemed to have remained constant with you throughout the years of having a camera?
You might be like myself where I for decades tried to quash the inherent approach that came naturally to me in photography, or you might have a closer understanding, not the genres you like to shoot, but the way you like to photograph.
You can see this idea at play in a lot of photographers who don't necessarily have a specific genre that they photograph.
Edward Steichen is one of the all-time greats of photography and throughout his entire career, his photography changed dramatically. All the way from pictorialism through to Directing World War 2 era films about aircraft carriers. But every image he creates has the Steichen fingerprint.
Like a lot of things in photography Style is a delicate thing. If you try and grab onto it too hard it seems to slip through your fingers.
If you are struggling to put your finger if you have a style/feel or not, get a collection of about 20 to 30 of your photos and show them to somebody who isn't in your immediate family. Don’t tell them that these photos are yours. Ask them if there are images in that collection that feel like they come from a different photographer altogether.
I think the responses might surprise you.
Thanks for reading!
P.S
I’ve lined up some professional photographers to speak during the cohort, and one, in particular, I’m very excited about. Join the waitlist to get 24hr early access to the slots when I open them up this coming Wednesday 23rd
Obie Oberholzer is one of my all-time favourite photographers whose work most certainly has a vibe about it. To get a flavour of his photography - check out this video.
