106 Monday Message - Finding Your Style
Finding your style is simple if you stay on track and refuse to Compare yourself to others. Ignore the competition; know your competition but use them for inspiration. I like to say "Don’t compare your middle to someone else’s end" and for those of you in the early stages of finding your style "Don’t compare your start to someone else’s middle". If you emulate, mimic, or copy others it is all a waste. Rather find the gaps and fill them; find something new to develop a solution. In this search you will happen upon a style and develop your look and feel along the way. I love to tell my students and you Photo World to shoot, shoot, shoot… NOW! & often; try every day to start. Same goes for editing; we need to continually practice and better our skills. Try studying light more than anything else, ANYTHING. Seeing the light can really change the game. Study the things you don’t yet have a good answer to. It is already out there and you can make it your own just by finding a good staring point.
Mistakes are not part of the art, they are part of learning. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it will move you closer in that direction. In short - your experience will set you apart naturally over time. What makes you happy about your work? We struggle with the ideas about doing what we love for a living and the reality is we rarely do what we love, but all the owrk we do for making a living allows for us to do what we love. If you enjoy the work you produce (your style), others will as well. The one thing people seem to never consider when they are finding their style is: your style already exists. It is the part of you that is placed in each photograph you take; fine tune it, expect it to change, steer toward the changes you want, and run with it.
Happy Shooting!
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