I didn’t set out with a particular style in mind when I started taking photos. At first, I just wanted to capture what caught my eye.
When I head out to take pictures, I don’t have a list of “must haves”.
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or,
a plan to shoot until the sun is at the perfect angle.
I go out and I walk.
It isn’t necessarily always on the marked trails or pathways in the woods. It is often bushwacking through a dense thicket into hidden meadows and forest intimate scenes that have been long forgotten or not even found.
I didn’t set out with a particular style in mind when I started taking photos. At first, I just wanted to capture what caught my eye. The usual,
Textures,
Light and shawdow.
The way the subject looked. It may be a stump, or the sun cascading through the spring leaves.
But one day, a friend pointed out something I hadn’t even noticed about my own work.
“You do that a lot,” she said. As I had my camera, four inches off the wet lowtide beach sand.“You take pictures from down low, with everything behind your subject.”
I stopped and thought about it. Was that true?
I scrolled through my photos and saw the pattern immediately—images where I crouched low, letting the world unfold behind my subject. It was something I had been doing without though, but once someone pointed it out, I guess it was my “style”.
I guess I do have a style.
And, now I recognized it.
Shooting from a lower angle makes ordinary subjects feel larger and gives the image a sense of depth. Photographs of the beach are, rather boring. However, if you get down low you can tell a story of the beach and the waves.
It tells a story beyond just the subject itself.
From that moment on, I embraced this perspective as part of my style. Now that I can recognize, or at least someone has pointed it out to me, I can refine it and be more intentional about it.
Style isn’t something you find all at once. It is something you uncover along the way, often when you least expect it.
And here’s what nobody tells you:
You will have to take volumes of photos to reveal your own style.
What I mean is that you need take photos and photos and more photos.
Then take additional pictures. Over time you will see a pattern in your body of work that pleases you. Reoccuring themes, set ups, subjects and angles will start to appear. It takes thousands upon thousands of photos to start getting there.
For me, it took a friend’s casual observation to make me see what had been there all along. Now, when I crouch down to frame a shot, I know I’m not just taking a picture. I’m seeing the world the way I was meant to.
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