How do you describe or find your style?

How do you or did you do this when entering into the photography world? Any tips anyone wants to share on helping find or describe it? or the "niche"

Thanks

V

I struggle with this. I don't think I have a style yet, but all my fellow photographers can pick my photos out of a collection of others so apparently I do have a style.

I don't think that you start off picking a style, it is something that develops over time and it's not until you have a fair size body of work that you can identify what the style is. Once you have identified it, you can then refine it and create more in that style, but I 'm not sure you can pick it at the beginning.

i think your personal attitude makes your style... example.. im a hobbyist with this but i have a ton of hobbies.. grrr..

anyway.. i will take pics of dinner, rather have funny candid faces than portraits... im all about the laughs.... but hey that is me..

I came across this video this afternoon and the topic is how to develop your style. I haven't watched yet to know if it is any good but it looks like it my have potential.

http://www.youtube.com …ography#p/u/1/4​4vFxRHH1D4

I don't have a "niche", or maybe I should more accurately say that I have photographed from niche to nich over the years. And, at least to me, each field of photography will be characterized by different "qualities" that can together make up a "style". At least maybe I guess.

Sorry if I am coming across as, well, ambivalent. But to me, thoughts about "style" just don't occur to me when I'm out shooting, and I don't see a "style" in my shooting. What I look to shoot depends on what I'm after and where I'm shooting. With a cool looking bird or other critter, I'll do my best to get a good "pose"/composition and good lighting. The critters don't always cooperate, of course, but then the main object is to capture natural beauty and interest.

Of course things like flowers, landscapes and other scenics and such allow you much more thought and flexibility in things like composition, framing, perspective and such, but again each is different in how you approach it. Someone who has looked at my shots of area mountain scenes would be hard pressed to find anything in common with my flower shots!

Urban/street photography offers some interesting opportunities. Both in how to frame and capture urban scenes, capturing candids, and then going more abstract into what some of us participating in a thread in the Urban Life and Travel sub-forum call "Urban Fragments". Some of the photogs there and other urban/street threads have really developed in their "look", so you could say they either have a well-defined "style" or else have a "style in progress".

One area that I rarely dabble in is Portrait photography, and never in weddings. These are two areas where people do seem to lean toward "style", both in the photography and also with a "touch" of post-processing that gives them a kind of "signature" look. But like I said, I don't go that way, and so my portraits tend to be very "unstylish"!

I think *style* i just way to limit oneself.

It's fine if it comes natural to you.
But if you'r active in looking for your style, and then you stick with it on puropse - then this is insane.
However, this my be helpful when it comes to marketing, as your boring photographs will be very recognizable.

In general, "style" just happens. You'll find that you prefer to shoot in particular ways with particular lighting set-ups and then prefer a certain way of doing PP. This doesn't mean that all of your photos will look the same, instead, it means that your prefences will show through in your photographs. It's really not that different than someones clothing/fashion style. You pick things you like and they often tend to follow a common theme.

I have no idea yet, but I hope to one day! In the mean time I just want to improve and have a more variety of gear to work with....

Although macro would be my main area of interest, I tend to venture into other areas every now & then. I guess if I had to pin it down to a particular word, I would say "Adventurous".

Style?

'Spray 'n pray' would be close.....:p

jra wrote in post #13371397
In general, "style" just happens. You'll find that you prefer to shoot in particular ways with particular lighting set-ups and then prefer a certain way of doing PP. This doesn't mean that all of your photos will look the same, instead, it means that your prefences will show through in your photographs. It's really not that different than someones clothing/fashion style. You pick things you like and they often tend to follow a common theme.

^^^ This.

Over on Dave Hobby's strobist blog, he has a short article about young artists copying "achieved" artists, being in a learning mode, while their own style percolates.

Just my opinion. Many will disagree.

But IMO, the way to "find" one's own "style" is to just shoot, and shoot a lot.

Next is to really examine what was shot. Not only the best of the bunch, but the rejects and the worst of the lot. In fact, the REALLY bad pictures that I take are far more interesting than just the mediocre ones. Because when I find myself taking horrible pictures of stupid subject matter, I ask myself, "what the hell was I thinking?"

People say that a lot, "what the hell was I thinking"? I get the impression that the question is usually rhetorical, that people like me don't REALLY want it answered. Because in my experience, people seem to only say that when they did something really embarassing, and then do stuff like delete their files or otherwise try to ignore/erase the mistake.

And I think that's at least potentially detrimental.

Next time you take a horrible picture and say to yourself, "what was I thinking", perhaps DON'T just delete it and try to pretend that you never took it. Don't treat the question as a rhetorical question which doesn't need to be answered. Really try to determine what the hell you WERE thinking. Because I like to think that people generally do things for a reason. Stupid reasons, maybe. But not for NO reason. If you do photography and you have a long run during which you produce nothing but embarassing crap, I think it's a good idea to REALLY know what it was that drew you to those images, why you took them, and what you WERE thinking. A person's worst and most embarrassing failures can be at least as informative as one's greatest successes. Don't erase your failures until you learn from them. Don't delete your crappy garbage pictures until you know WHY you screwed up so much, what compelled you to take such a bad picture in the first place, and why it ended up being so bad.

Eventually, you won't so much choose your style, you'll notice yourself developing a style, at which point you'll have a greater capacity for utilizing and manipulating it.

Sort of like canoeing down a river. The current is like one's artistic direction. There's often specific preferences and techniques and styles that get one's gears working, and that can be just as natural as the direction in which the water is flowing. But you don't try to paddle upstream, that's a futile endeavor. Instead, you accept that you're going downstream, and then learn to control your movement within those parameters. The canoer who realizes that water flows downstream and uses that to his advantage is typically going to be more successful than the guy who tries to constantly paddle upstream because he doesn't realize which way the water is flowing.

Some things are natural. Accept what comes naturally, then work within those parameters. One can do this by working a LOT, doing a lot of research, and very importantly, studying one's own successes AND failures. The worst pictures that you ever take are precisely the ones that you SHOULDN'T delete right off the bat. At least...not until after you've learned from them and know why you took them in the first place.

Just one viewpoint, though. Many people here don't work that way and get along fine, and that's okay. Do whatever works for you. I'm just trying to give one angle that I don't typically hear many people talking about.

hellbike wrote in post #13371109
I think *style* i just way to limit oneself.

It's fine if it comes natural to you.
But if you'r active in looking for your style, and then you stick with it on puropse - then this is insane.
However, this my be helpful when it comes to marketing, as your boring photographs will be very recognizable.

I don't entirely agree.

I think it's probably counter-productive to say, "this is the style I want to have, so how should I gt it?"

But on the other hand, we're really just talking about self-awareness, aren't we? For whatever reason, someone just might naturally gravitate towards certain kinds of pictures. I think it's a good idea to be AWARE of what turns a person on, then they have a better foundation for developing and fostering their natural talents. Not really much different than a person deciding to take a literary path in college vs a mathematical one. If you've previously spent your entirely life hating math and sucking at it, while being pretty damn good at writing essays and studying literature, then you'll probably go where your life has led you, instead of trying to become a math major due to some kind of arbitrary expectation that that's what you SHOULD do.

Find out what you're best at and what you're passionate about, and then proceed from there. I don't see that as necessarily creating boxes for onesself. If anything, that kind of self awareness could allow one to better focus on excelling on the things that they DO have more of a natural affinity for.

Trying to paddle upstream might absolutely be counterproductive. But once you're aware of where the currents are taking you, you're likely in a better position to work with it and use it to your advantage.

Don't try to MAKE a style. Instead, pay attention to what you're doing. Work a lot, see what kind of style is emerging, and then refine it.

Just a suggestion, of course. I'm sure that that doesn't work for everyone.

How do you define "style?" Do you mean what type of shooting do you enjoy doing (i.e., genre) or do your photos follow a certain format (i.e., same post processing techniques)?

When I think of style, I think of what type of shooting I like to do. I would define my style as Landscape photography. More specifically, urban landscape photography. I do not process or format my photos in a similar way.

The best way to define your style is to look at your entire collection of photos and see what the predominate subject matter is. If you find that most of your shots are street portraits or that is what you enjoy doing the most, then that is what I would describe your style as.

What led me to shooting in that style? Well, I didn't think about it. It's just what I gravitated towards. I enjoy doing it. I've tried other styles, but didn't enjoy it as much. My suggestion would be just to go out and shoot and don't think about it. Try everything. You will eventually figure out what you enjoy doing and then you will have developed your style without even knowing it.

That ^^^ & this are good simple answers IMO

jra wrote in post #13371397
In general, "style" just happens. You'll find that you prefer to shoot in particular ways with particular lighting set-ups and then prefer a certain way of doing PP. This doesn't mean that all of your photos will look the same, instead, it means that your prefences will show through in your photographs. It's really not that different than someones clothing/fashion style. You pick things you like and they often tend to follow a common theme.