A successful photographer often not only has great technical skills and creative mind – but an unique style as well. So, how can you find your own style and become a successful photographer? Here are a few tips:
Be Inspired, but not copying
Look through a lot of photos, make note of the ones that you really like. Often you can get some inspiration from them, or you will get the light bulb moment: Oh yes! The shot can be taken like that!
Often you can take something out of those photos, e.g. black and white; water reflection; punchy HDR; Backlit; super shallow DOF (Depth-Of-Field) etc.
But – it should stop at “inspiring” and do not start copying. There is virtually no way to copy someone else’s photography style because it is not just a photo print, it has the photographer’s mind, heart and soul in it that you can never copy. (It would be our priviledge if you think our photos are worth copying LOL but sorry, it is pretty much impossible for you to produce a copy of them)
Keep shooting!
Shoot on a regular basis – daily would be the best, but given how busy our lives are nowadays, weekly is also good enought. A wide range zoom lens would be preferred (e.g. 18-200mm) because you only need to bring one lens and being able to take shots at different focal length. Remember, image quality is not the top priority in this exercise, hence you can have your heavy 70-200mm f2.8 stay at home of course there is no harm if you want to bring it with you if you have one.
Review photos
During weeknight when you finished from work and after dinner, it is best time to go through the photos you have taken from the exercise above. Make note of the ones that you like the most. Or you can even make a collection of these photos. If you are using windows, there is a freeware called ExposurePlot that can analysis any JPEGs and plot a graph based on the focal length, aperture etc; so that you can know at a glance what settings do you use most. (It is useful for deciding to purchase a lens too!)
After a while, you should start seeing your style from this collection; and now you can start sticking with it, be good at it and master it! 😀 – Remember Murad Osmann with his famous #followmeto “Girlfriend travel” style?
Confession: yes, while I have taken a lot of landscape photos with HDR style post processing, I am still yet to find my 100% style! Simply because this is a long process and can take up to years – but it is never too late as long as you make a start on it