Photographic style: discovered, adopted or created?

Brows­ing social media, you may find your­self drawn to cer­tain pho­tog­ra­phers. It may be that the sub­ject of their pho­tog­ra­phy inter­ests you, or it may also be that you are attract­ed to their style of pho­tog­ra­phy. Hav­ing a spe­cif­ic pho­to­graph­ic style is some­thing that many pho­tog­ra­phers aspire to or even pur­sue. It seems to be the mark of an accom­plished pho­tog­ra­ph­er, as shown by the appar­ent suc­cess of the pho­tog­ra­phers we follow.

Recog­ni­tion of a par­tic­u­lar look or iden­ti­ty by oth­ers can be per­son­al­ly reward­ing and is prob­a­bly why we seek it out in the first place. It also demon­strates a con­sis­ten­cy in our work, and right­ly or wrong­ly, a lev­el of com­pe­tence and an inher­ent abil­i­ty. To have a pho­to­graph­ic style gives the per­cep­tion that you are accom­plished. More impor­tant­ly, we want our pho­tographs to feel our own, exhibit­ing how we see and inter­pret things, and that is what makes it attractive.

What do we mean by style?

Those pho­tog­ra­phers we admire impose a style on their work. It is their visu­al sig­na­ture, their mark, and how we might recog­nise their work with­out being told who the author is. If you are a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, your style or visu­al sig­na­ture is part of your brand.

As non-pro­fes­sion­als, style can be viewed as our own visu­al sig­na­ture, our own per­son­al iden­ti­ty that we dis­play when shar­ing images on social media or in cam­era clubs. 

Style is the com­bi­na­tion of visu­al choic­es that influ­ence how a pho­to­graph looks and how it com­mu­ni­cates. That trans­lates into how we make images, from cap­ture through edit­ing. Often, we begin by adopt­ing. Per­haps the sim­plest exam­ple is choos­ing black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy. Being mono­chro­mat­ic, dis­count­ing colour infor­ma­tion, cre­ates a lev­el of abstrac­tion. With black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy, we have many more pos­si­bil­i­ties to exag­ger­ate or sup­press tones with­in the image. We can elect to go low-key or high-key, chang­ing the look and feel of the image. It might be that we notice that a par­tic­u­lar per­spec­tive is used by a pho­tog­ra­ph­er – low on the ground or shoot­ing very close to the main sub­ject, for exam­ple. A pho­tog­ra­ph­er might employ very shal­low depth of field to accen­tu­ate ele­ments with­in the frame. It is impor­tant to note that no sin­gle choice con­sti­tutes a per­son­al style.

From the very begin­ning of our pho­tog­ra­phy, we are influ­enced by the work of oth­ers. This could be genre, how we com­pose and expose our images, and how we edit. As in all pho­tog­ra­phy and all forms of art, we are influ­enced by oth­er cre­ators and evolve this into our own. Through mak­ing pho­tographs, recur­ring pref­er­ences emerge, and we may even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­er some­thing that oth­ers call our style. 

Dif­fer­ent kinds of style

Style can emerge over time. Look­ing back at my own work, I can see dif­fer­ent styles ten years ago com­pared to today. Back then, my images were dark­er, more ​‘pho­to­graph­ic’, and today they are lighter, low-con­trast, and per­haps ​‘painter­ly’. That is not to say all of my work in those peri­ods con­formed to these char­ac­ter­is­tics. There are many instances where they do not, which brings me to anoth­er reflec­tion. Cer­tain loca­tions or sub­jects often com­mand dif­fer­ent styl­is­tic approach­es. A style can exist for an indi­vid­ual image, a few images or a broad­er body of work, a loca­tion, or indeed par­tic­u­lar time peri­ods in your life.

Per­son­al style can be defined as recur­ring char­ac­ter­is­tics across your pho­tog­ra­phy. This is prob­a­bly the most aligned with our gen­er­al def­i­n­i­tion of what style is. If you were to lay out a large num­ber of your images, what emerges con­sis­tent­ly? It could be the way in which you edit, com­pose or indeed the sub­ject mat­ter you choose.

Project style may well over­ride or sup­ple­ment your per­son­al style. Unlike per­son­al style, which may emerge grad­u­al­ly, a project style can be con­scious­ly cre­at­ed. It is delib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to help com­mu­ni­cate and give coher­ence to a body of work. When prepar­ing my pan­el for my Fel­low­ship of the Roy­al Pho­to­graph­ic Soci­ety, I decid­ed to have a cer­tain ​‘look’ to the pho­tographs. They were all low-key, and colour was de-empha­sised to allow images tak­en in dif­fer­ent sea­sons to sit togeth­er. I also felt that this sup­port­ed the nar­ra­tive of aban­don­ment which fea­tured in the panel.

A tech­nique or aes­thet­ic would be a par­tic­u­lar visu­al treat­ment that may sim­ply be some­thing you enjoy using. I have tran­si­tioned from ultra-sharp images using tilt and shift lens­es to soft­er, shal­low depth of field using antique lens­es and embrac­ing their inher­ent imper­fec­tions. Front-to-back sharp­ness as afford­ed by tilt and shift lens­es was some­thing that seemed to be sought after a decade ago. I have evolved my inter­pre­ta­tion of the land­scape, and incor­po­rat­ing clear reces­sion (which includes dis­tant objects being less sharp) is some­thing I now pre­fer. I would also say that this is part of my evo­lu­tion away from doc­u­ment­ing the land­scape and try­ing to present it more poet­i­cal­ly. My chang­ing rela­tion­ship with pho­tog­ra­phy caused the styl­is­tic change.

Styles can be tem­po­rary. A pho­tog­ra­ph­er might delib­er­ate­ly impose a visu­al lan­guage on a body of work: square for­mat, mono­chrome, mut­ed colour or tonal palette, high con­trast, par­tic­u­lar lens or par­tic­u­lar per­spec­tive, etc.

Intent before style

As we become more expe­ri­enced, many of the deci­sions involved in mak­ing and edit­ing pho­tographs require less con­scious thought. Through exper­i­men­ta­tion and expe­ri­ence, we build a vir­tu­al library of visu­al approach­es that we can call upon almost intu­itive­ly. This releas­es some of the men­tal band­width pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied by tech­nique and allows us to con­cen­trate more ful­ly on what we are try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate. What do we want this image, or images, to say? How can style aug­ment that message?

When style becomes a problem

If you dis­cov­er a style that you like, you adopt it, and it proves suc­cess­ful in so much as the images receive pos­i­tive respons­es (via social media, cam­era club com­pe­ti­tions, for exam­ple), then the incli­na­tion is to repeat this. Even­tu­al­ly, the style can become a for­mu­la. The stronger your recog­nised style becomes, the hard­er it is to escape it. The ques­tion the pho­tog­ra­ph­er asks them­selves is, ​‘How do I make this image look like one of my pho­tographs?’ Instead of ​‘What am I try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate’, and what visu­al choic­es will sup­port that?’ The key here is not the ​‘one’ over­ar­ch­ing style but the lan­guage spe­cif­ic to the image or images in hand to con­vey the mes­sage. Styles employed as part of your visu­al vocab­u­lary is use­ful, but when it becomes your rule­book, then it can be restrictive.

Mak­ing visu­al choices

Style is dynam­ic. It can change over time as our inter­ests change, our expe­ri­ences accu­mu­late, and our sense of aes­thet­ic evolves. Encoun­ters with the works of oth­er cre­ators con­tin­ue to influ­ence how we work. Style is not some­thing that you should find and then preserve. 

You don’t need to pos­sess a style as though it were an achieve­ment or qual­i­fi­ca­tion. What mat­ters is devel­op­ing the abil­i­ty to make visu­al choic­es appro­pri­ate to what you are try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate. If char­ac­ter­is­tics recur nat­u­ral­ly across those choic­es, that may be your style, at least for now.