How to Find Your Photography Style
The best photographers, artists, and directors all have a distinct and recognizable style. Finding your own unique style is important for you to stand out in a saturated market. Whether you're starting out or have been shooting for years, here are some tips to help you find and develop your photography style.
If you are starting out and are not sure what you want to shoot yet, try shooting everything. Just empty the clip and see what you enjoy the most. There are so many different specializations in photography, like portrait, landscape, food, product, or event photography. Try out whatever interests you and see; this is the best way to do it. Shoot for free to get the experience so you’ll know what you like and don’t like to shoot.
What do you like to see?
Once you know what genre you like to shoot, the next step would be figuring out what you like to see in that genre. You can create a mood board or note what you like to see in photographs. Pull from your work and from photographers you like. Your style will combine things you already naturally like and do and things you like to see in photographs. Pull photos from your gallery that move you and recognize the specific things you like seeing there. Is it the way the shots are lit, the movement captured, and the emotion captured? What is it that makes this photo great in your eyes? Take note of these things you like and be aware of how you use them when approaching shooting.
Shoot Often
When you are looking to develop your style, shooting as much as possible is important. Shooting for yourself is really going to allow you to have full control over the shoot and final images, so you can make it how you like. Build a healthy library of images you can examine and edit to your liking. This was a big step for me; the more I shot, the more I could see exactly what I liked and thought was good. Setting up unpaid shoots allowed me to slow down and craft the image how I wanted.
Spend Less Time On Social Media
This one is big! It made sense to me when I found out that many good rappers don't really listen to a lot of rap music because you start comparing yourself or sounding too much like someone else. There is so much inspiration online, and it can be overwhelming. Constantly looking at other people's work can distract you from your own style when you are too focused on their techniques. Instead, practice and experiment; spend time with your camera and get comfortable. This will allow you not to be swayed by online trends and really develop your own style.
I really hope this helps in developing your style as a photographer. Let me know what you learn about your photography style or anything I didn’t include here that helped you develop your style.