Personal style

Learning goal

By noticing the choices that repeat in your own photos, you will be able to see what your personal style is like and begin to develop it consciously. You will explain that style isn't a filter or a ready-made editing preset, but the sum of decisions made again and again in areas such as subject, light, color, distance, framing and timing. By reading your own archive like a stranger's work, you will find the choices you make without realizing it, organize them in a style map, and tell apart imitating masters in order to learn from copying their gaze. You will accept that style can change over time and can't be built by force. You will question whether your own color and light preferences carry different skin tones equally, and whether your style shows people as subjects or as part of a set.

The question

Your friend lines up on the table the forty photos they took over the last year and, as the older member suggested, tries to read them like the work of someone they don't know at all. After a while, links appear between the frames that they had never noticed. In almost all of them the sun has just risen; the light comes low and from the side. In most of them there is a person, but always at one edge of the frame, small and alone. The colors are warm, a little faded, as if printed on old paper.

They had chosen none of this knowingly; they went out walking in the mornings, always used the same preset in their editing program, and were shy of getting close to people. Still, when the forty frames came side by side, something emerged that could be told apart from someone else's frames. How do I find my own style? Are choices made without realizing it a style, or only a habit?

Context

While examining the masters who caught the moment, we gathered each one's decisions about what to look at, how close to get to the scene and when to press the shutter into a single way of seeing (Lesson 26.2). In the reading your own photos lesson you saw that the memory of the shoot gets in the way when you look at your own frames, and that waiting a while lightens this load (Lesson 23.7). In the previous lesson, too, you practiced reading a frame someone else took step by step, first listing what is visible and then weighing its meaning and value (Lesson 26.6).

This lesson turns that reading skill onto your own work. Personal style is the thing most often expected of a photographer but least explained; it is usually talked about like a secret or a talent. Yet most of a style is made of observable decisions, and these decisions can be made visible by anyone who reads their own photos carefully.

Simple explanation

What is style made of?

Personal style is the sum of a photographer's recurring choices about what they shoot, which light they wait for, which colors they love, how close they get to the subject and how they later process the file, which makes their work distinguishable from someone else's. Style shows not in a single frame but in a body of work; a single photo may be luck, but a choice repeated across forty photos is a tendency.

Style is often confused with a filter or a preset. Applying the same color edit to all the photos gives them a common look, but this look doesn't replace the decisions made at the moment of shooting: where you looked, when you pressed the shutter, how close you got to the subject. The real source of style isn't the editing program, but how the photographer looks at the world; editing can strengthen this gaze but can't create it on its own. The work of two photographers using the same preset can still be told apart if their gazes are different.

An unconscious pattern is the repetition formed in a photographer's work by choices they make again and again without realizing it, out of habit, shyness or chance. Your friend's morning light, the small people at the edge and the faded warm colors are such a pattern. An unconscious pattern isn't yet a style; but it is a style's raw material. Noticing it lets you decide knowingly which choices you want to keep and which you want to change.

How do you see your own style?

A style map is a table a photographer prepares by counting and noting, under headings such as subject, light, color, distance, framing and editing, the choices that repeat across a group of frames chosen from their own work. For each of the forty frames, the direction and hour of the light, the person's place and size in the frame, and the warmth and saturation of the colors are written down; then you look at which choices repeat and how often. This map turns a similarity the eye senses at a glance into decisions that have been named and counted.

Once the map is drawn up, a question is put in front of every repetition: is this a preference, or an avoidance? Morning light may truly be a light you love; but the small people at the edge may also be the result of a shyness about getting close to people. Making a style conscious means strengthening the choices you love and testing those born of avoidance. Remembering that the memory of the shoot gets in the way when you look at your own photos, and preparing the map after waiting a while, makes the reading more honest.

How does style develop?

Imitation for learning is a photographer knowingly trying out a master's way of working, light or framing in order to understand their gaze. Imitating for a while how a master who caught the moment set up the scene and waited, or a landscape master's tonal planning, teaches from the inside how that gaze is built. What you really learn while imitating is why the master shot at that hour, at that distance and from that angle; after a while you start to see whether the same decision works on your own subject. This is different from copying masters' work and presenting it as your own; the aim is to learn a method and then apply it to your own subject and your own question. Style is often born from pieces learned from many masters joining with the photographer's own curiosity.

A style period is a photographer's style gathering around certain choices over a certain span of time and, changing over time, passing into a new period. Style isn't something found once and kept forever; as subjects, interests and life change, it changes too. Trying to build a style by force can lead to forcing all photos into the same mold and dulling curiosity. Looking at your own earlier periods is instructive too: if your frames from two years ago are different from today's, this isn't a loss, but a sign that your gaze has traveled. Consistency is valuable, but it shouldn't take the place of curiosity.

A style is also tested by how it shows colors and people. A warm, faded color edit can make light skin look pale and bloodless, and dark skin close to a muddy gray; a style's color decision is checked by looking at whether it carries different skin tones with the same care. People who always stay small at the edge of the frame also leave a question: does the style show people as subjects, or as the set of a landscape? This isn't a rule, but a question the photographer should ask of their style.

Visual evidence

You turn the forty frames into a style map with the notes you took. In the light column, thirty-four frames have the first hour of morning, from the side and low; in the color column, almost all are warm and low in saturation; in the people column, twenty-six frames have a person, in all of them at the edge of the frame and small. The similarity you sensed at a glance now stands on the table as counted decisions.

You put the question in front of every repetition. You truly love morning light; the soft side light of the first hour is what takes you outside at that hour. But for the small people at the edge the honest answer is different: you are shy of getting close. When you try the faded warm edit on a portrait of a dark-skinned neighbor, you see the warmth of the face disappear and turn gray.

The next week you keep the morning light, readjust the edit so that the neighbor's face doesn't lose its skin color, and for the first time get close to a person and bring them into the middle of the frame. The frame still looks like your frames; the same light, the same calm. But the person is no longer a set, but the subject of the photo.

Common mistakes

Summary

Personal style is the sum, visible in a body of work, of decisions made again and again in the areas of subject, light, color, distance, framing and editing; it can't be created with a preset and is often born from unconscious patterns a photographer forms without realizing it. Reading your own archive like a stranger's work and drawing up a style map makes these patterns visible and lets you ask whether each repetition is a preference or an avoidance; imitating masters in order to learn teaches a method from the inside, style changes by dividing into periods, and whether a style's color decision carries different skin tones equally and whether it shows people as subjects is tested separately.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will draw up a style map from your own photos.

1. Choose between thirty and fifty photos from the last year; after waiting a week, line them up side by side like a stranger's work.
2. For each frame, write in a table the direction and hour of the light, the subject, the distance, the person's place and size in the frame, and the warmth and saturation of the colors.
3. Find the five most often repeated choices and write next to each whether it is a preference or an avoidance.
4. Shoot a new series by knowingly changing one avoidance. Try your color edit on portraits of people of different skin tones and check whether it keeps the skin's natural color.

Check yourself

• Can you explain that style isn't a preset but repeated decisions?
• In your own style map, were you able to tell a preference from an avoidance?
• Did you check whether your style's color decision carries different skin tones equally?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What is the real source of personal style?

• A) The preset used
• B) The camera's brand
• C) Decisions made again and again at the moment of shooting and afterward
• D) The size of the photo

2. If the reason your friend always shows people small at the edge of the frame is shyness, what is this repetition?

• A) An unconscious pattern born of an avoidance
• B) A conscious style decision
• C) The effect of a preset
• D) A light preference

3. What does a style map make possible?

• A) Equalizing the colors of the photos
• B) Printing the photos large
• C) Copying masters' photos
• D) Turning a similarity sensed at a glance into counted and named decisions

4. If a warm, faded color edit turns the face of a dark-skinned neighbor gray, what is done?

• A) Leaving the edit as it is, because style must be preserved
• B) Adjusting the edit so it keeps the skin's natural color
• C) Converting the portrait to black and white
• D) Taking the neighbor's portrait out of the series

Answers

1. C — Style is born from decisions repeated in shooting and editing; a preset doesn't replace this.
2. A — A repetition born of an avoidance isn't yet a conscious preference; it should be noticed and tested.
3. D — The map turns the similarity the eye senses into concrete, counted choices.
4. B — A style should carry different skin tones with the same care; the color decision is adjusted accordingly.

Summary card

• Style is the sum of repeated decisions; it isn't a preset.
• Read your own archive like a stranger's work.
• Draw up a style map; ask of every repetition whether it is a preference or an avoidance.
• Imitate masters to learn, don't copy.
• Test your style's color decision on different skin tones; show the person as a subject.

Bridge to the next lesson

The older member, studying the style map, asked your friend a question: what did the first light of morning mean to them? After thinking a little, your friend said that for them it meant starting again every day. The older member suggested they begin their next series not from a scene they saw, but from this idea: starting again. Your friend didn't know how an idea could turn into a photo, how an abstract thought could be made visible in a concrete frame. How does a photograph express an idea? The next lesson tells about conceptual photography, in which the concept comes first and the image carries it.