Do you have a personal style? Is there a “something” people could point out in a collection of photographs and say “those were taken by …” or even “that is _____esque”?
I am still right at the start of my photography journey. It’s too early to predict what my still is or will be. Not even a particular genre has grabbed me more than any other, I have moods where I do portraits, then landscape, holiday snaps … I have yet to fully explore the clichés too, although you might be surprised to hear that after looking at the collected mediocrity that is my photostream.
Mark though I would say has a style, I am pretty jealous!
View more from Chimpola at Flickr.
There is a trend of extreme-key (high or low), heavy on the saturation, dramatic skies and off-kilter viewpoints. This is just my interpretation/observation and may not be concious or even correct. Mark?
What got me on to this topic was this thread over at Utata
I was wondering how you decided it was your thing. Where you searching for it or did it found you? Are you trying to escape it or are you happily dwelving into it to bring the most out of it?
For myself I am going to keep plugging away and hope to get to the point where I am proficient enough to take nice photographs. I have no pretensions that what I do is art, or even that I will even get there. While ever I enjoy the process and looking over the result that is good enough for me. It wouldn’t be a good idea to lock myself down when I haven’t fully learned or developed even the basics, but one day it would be nice to have a style that other people appreciate.
One Comment
No Chris, you have me bang on there! I love a really dramatic sky, I’ll specifically get out there and shoot when I see loads of clouds.
After a couple of years of experimenting I’ve found a style that I’m comfortable with. It’s strange really because I went through a rough patch where I couldn’t take a photograph of anything, it just sort of happened as I took bits of this that I liked and bits of that. I think if you look at your flickr favourites you are really an almangamation of all the different influences you have.
I looked through my work over the past year, I looked at the start of the year and thought (as I did then) that they were lacking something. I look at the last couple of months and I am happy with what I am producing. They aren’t master pieces, but I would be happy to put some of them on my wall.
As with yourself I have no pretentions about what I do, it’s a hobby and primarily I do it for myself and really enjoy it. The great thing about this hobby is that you can stamp a bit of yourself onto the photographs and create photographs that you like to see (even if others don’t!)
As for the art thing, I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with the art tag, I’m not sure to be honest. If people want to call their works art then so be it. I’m sure the manipulated pieces could be called art, it’s certainly more than just aiming a camera and pressing fire. I’ll let others discuss that, but mine are photographs to me, not art.
Thanks for the nice comments chris btw Chris,