Wondering How to Find Your Unique Photographic Style?

June 13, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Jason Row

Yesterday, 2:57 AM

If you look through the portfolios of the any of the worlds most renowned photographers, one thing will strike you the most. All of them have a unique look, the images may be very different in appearance but through all of them you will see some form of identifying theme. A photographic style can be seen from the gritty and bloody realism of a war photographer through to the surrealistic, dreamlike images of top fashion photographers.

So how do you develop a style in your photography?

Well the first tip for those just beginning their photographic journey is don’t try to create a one from scratch. One thing to try first is to emulate images of photographers that inspire you. This may teach you many new techniques both in the art of photography and the post production, as well as helping you to identify what a photographic style is. However, whilst emulating the look of your peers will improve your skills, it will not help you develop your own style alone.

Shoot, Shoot Shoot!

The easiest way to develop a style is to take pictures, constantly and frequently. Take images that you enjoy doing, portraits, travel shots, documentary. When you find an area of photography that you enjoy and more importantly, that you believe you take good images in, then concentrate on that. The first rule of developing a style is to be the master of one trade not the jack of all.

Start to take images in your chosen field, don’t be afraid to experiment, use different angles, lenses, exposures or lighting but stay within the limited field. For example, if you enjoy travel photography, concentrate on all area’s within this, by all means try studio portraits, or architecture but concentrate most of your efforts on travel.

As you start to build a collection of images, take the time to sit down and look at all the images you have taken from the start of your photographic journey to the present. Your very first images will probably show some naivety in skills but you may be able, even at that stage, to see some sort of uniformity and consistency through the images. Look further through to your more recent images and see if that theme has carried on and improved. If so, you have sub-consciously started to develop your own style. Now you have identified it, you need to hone in on what makes it unique, and improve on it.

Very different images, linked by a colourful, saturated style – Photos by the Odessa Files

So what sorts of things should you be looking for in developing a style?

Well it could be something as simple as reflections – maybe you have noticed a lot of your images contain reflections in lakes, windows or mirrors. Perhaps you have noticed that many of your images are shot in low contrast flat lighting of derelict buildings, maybe there is a single colour that is predominant in your shots. One photographer I know has bicycles in many of the shots he takes. Whatever the linking factor is, it should be something that continues to inspire you to take more images and also to push the boundaries further and further in order to see how far you can go without compromising your own style.

A documentary style using a shallow depth of field – Photos by the Odessa Files

Don’t Force It!

One thing you should not do however, is push yourself too hard. The moment you start to concentrate too much on a style will be the time it starts to fall apart. Your style, should be something that comes naturally, something that your are entirely at ease with. When you are looking through the viewfinder, your conscious thought should be about the composition, and the technical aspects of the shot, your style should be entirely sub-conscious.

So in summary, to develop your own style, be inspired by, but do not emulate your peers, shoot, shoot, and shoot some more in the field of photography you are most at home with and look for the linking factors in your images from the start of your photographic journey. It will not happen overnight, it will not happen in a few months, for most of us it will take several years before we start to see a theme running through our images, but when you do see it, you will feel a deep and lasting sense of achievement.

Jason Row is a British born travel photographer now living in Ukraine. You can follow him on Facebook or visit his site, The Odessa Files. He also maintains a blog chronicling his exploits as an Expat in the former Soviet Union

Why Shooting to the Right Gives You Better Final Images

February 18, 2012 • 1 Comment

Some of you may have heard this term before, some not, but for everyone, it’s a great tip for optimizing the quality of the image coming from your sensor. So to understand how to shoot to the right, first we need to understand the camera’s histogram.

Virtually all DSLRs and many higher-level compacts have what’s known as a histogram display. A histogram is basically a graph showing the distribution of light in your images, from the shadows to the highlights. The left side of the graph represents the darkest shadows in the image whilst the right side represents the brightest highlights. A good exposure is one that keeps all that information within the confines of the graph. If the graph is sliding off the scale to the left, you are losing shadow detail, conversely if it is sliding off to the right you are “blowing” the highlights.

A classic “shot to the right” example

So, how does shooting to the right give you the possibility of better image quality? Well the technicalities are quite complicated and relate to how a sensor captures the light. Put very simply, the CCD or CMOS sensors found in digital cameras are more efficient at capturing the light at the brighter end of the exposure and less efficient at capturing the darker end and therefore by getting the exposure more to the highlight end, we are maximizing the use of the sensor.

Before we go any further, you should be aware that you need to shoot in the RAW format of your camera for this to work, as you will need to correct the exposure later in a RAW convertor. Shooting jpeg means you have already limited the dynamic range and compressed the image so any advantage of shooting to the right will have been lost.

So to the practicalities of how you go about shooting to the right. First, you need to compose your image and meter the exposure. Take the shot at the metered exposure and using the histogram function in your display/review mode, see where the highlights and shadow details lie. What you are aiming for is to have the bulk of the exposure lying to the right side of the histogram without any of it bleeding out of the right side and blowing the highlights.

If the bulk of your histogram is to the middle or left of the graph then you need to increase the exposure. If your image is already off the right side, then you are clipping the highlights and need to reduce the exposure to bring it back. You are aiming to have the highlights just inside the right side of the histogram.

The top image shows “shot to the right” uncorrected. In the bottom image, I have corrected

in the Raw convertor revealing details in both the ice and the dogs fur.

Visually on your camera screen and in your editor, the image will possibly look over exposed. The trick now is the correct the exposure using the levels controls in your raw convertor to move the left side of the histogram to the left edge and the mid tones slider to correct the overall look. Because you have shot to the right, you will find that you can get a much better black without introducing extra noise to the image. You may also find that you can pull back the highlights to a much greater degree as well. (In post production, it is much easier to pull back highlights without introducing noise than to brighten the shadows which does introduce noise).

So that’s about it, a simple way to maximize the quality of your image.

There are a couple of things that can help, firstly if your camera is capable of showing an RGB histogram, then use this as it will show if any particular color is off the histogram scale. Also it is better to use the histogram on the exposed image rather than using the live histogram that some cameras have, this will give you a more accurate result.

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Wondering How to Find Your Unique Photographic Style?

Why Shooting to the Right Gives You Better Final Images