5 Tips To Help Photographers Develop Their Own Signature Style
Nov 6, 2014
Brad Olson
We love it when our readers get in touch with us to share their stories. This article was contributed to DIYP by a member of our community. If you would like to contribute an article, please contact us here.
Share:
Developing your own signature style is a critical and integral part of becoming a photographer. InMyBag recently featured a pretty clever article about personal style which are sharing here.
Your style may flex a little to meet your client’s demands, but it should always be present to identify you.
Here’s 5 tips from the wonderfully stylish Brad Olson…
1) Look At A Lot Of Photos
Analyze what you like about great images and then do something different. Don’t imitate or borrow concepts from those photos, instead, figure out what it is that moves you about an image and decide how you can recreate that feeling or impact in your own unique way.
2) Don’t Look At A Lot Of Photos
In the same way that listening to slang or curse words can creep into your vocabulary, seeing a lot of poor photography can make you start to think that it ‘isn’t so bad’. It probably is very bad. Social media is rich with a wide range of images of various quality, limit what you choose to see. If you actively avoid poor images and seek high quality, it raises the bar for your expectation of your own work.
3) Follow Artists That Inspire You – From A Distance
Often there is a ‘regional’ look to photos in a city or geographic area. Support your local artists, but don’t follow their work regularly.
The artists that inspire me the most live in Italy, Australia, Canada, Poland and Russia. We don’t compete for the same clients and we don’t shoot the same subjects or locations.
4) Lose Your Watermark
This is controversial and do what you think best protects your work, but from my experience, I’ve had more images stolen that had watermarks. If you show your work without your logo and people can still recognize it as your work, you are developing your visual style.
5) Submit to curated galleries
Sites like Vogue Italia, 1x, Pentaprism, Worbz and Inmybag for example, have experienced editors that look at thousands of images and have a track record of identifying strong talent. If they are selecting and enjoying your work, you are probably on the right track to creating your own distinctive style.
About The Author
Brad Olson: I’m a fashion, editorial & lifestyle photographer based in the US. I specialize in fashion, editorial and lifestyle photography, I bring my experiences from video production, graphic design and music to create a visual style that is uniquely my own. You can see more of Brad’s work on his website and follow his Flickr and Facebook pages.
If you want to learn more about Brad, he recently did a wonderful submission over at InMyBag (part of it is posted here) which includes his philosophy, inspiration and full list of gear.
We love it when our readers get in touch with us to share their stories. This article was contributed to DIYP by a member of our community. If you would like to contribute an article, please contact us here.
Join the Discussion
DIYP Comment Policy
Be nice, be on-topic, no personal information or flames.
5 responses to “5 Tips To Help Photographers Develop Their Own Signature Style”
Thank you very much, DIYPhotography!
Our pleasure, really! You’re welcomed any time
Well her comes the criticism.
Point 4 talks about losing water marks…. Did you even look at the example pictures in this post? THEY ALL HAVE WATER MARKS ON THEM!
Point 1 and 2 are obvious contradictions and you’ve offered no background to people to help them judge whats a good photo and what’s made. In fact to think you can even offer such advice is just damn right rude because for example the photo’s used in this post are all rubbish IMHO. And thats what matters, the individuals opinion to how they like their photo’s, thats what they need to sell, their own style their own opinion. Not yours!
I think the problems are;
Anything and everything you can think of, every ‘style’, is currently being done as well or better by many others.
To develop a style you need to get lots and lots of photos published in a place where your style can be recognised. Not easy.
The internet is awash with ‘stunning images’ with pro and semi-pro photographers all showing their best work on many different sites, styles being copied left, right and centre.
As an ‘enthusiast’, I will try to develop a style, but I will probably be the only one to notice, and I’ll settle for that.
Keep up the good work.
If you strive to create a style, a characteristic look, then it is going to look contrived and artificial. If you follow your instincts then you will eventually have a recognisable style whether you like it or not, and however diverse the content of your photography. As Buffon said “Le style est l’homme meme” (The style is the man himself).