Mastering your camera and understanding the basic principles of photography is one thing, finding you own personal style within your images is something completely different. In a world where we compare ourselves to others more than ever before, the journey of discovering your own artistic voice can be a frustrating one rather than intriguing and joyful. In this post I’ll share some tips and activities you can do to help you find your style in photography – and enjoy the process!
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Why do I need to find my own photography style?
You might be wondering why you even need to develop your own voice in your images, isn’t taking nice pictures enough?
For me, this really depends on your reasons for picking up your camera in the first place. If you’re simply taking photos to remember life events, or you’re not really interested in photography as an art form, then you probably don’t need to worry so much about finding your own style because the purpose is to capture that moment to help you remember it in years to come.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to make money from photography by working with clients, then you’re going to want your images to stand out and be instantly recognisable as yours. Your unique style makes people remember you and, in today’s very visual world, having a distinct look and feel that flows through your work will help set you apart from others in your niche.
Real life examples
Take a look at the screenshots from three Instagram accounts I admire below, Bea from @bealubas, Monique from @bee.the.love and Lucia from @healthygoodiesbylucia.
Can you see how each one has a clear, well-defined and unique style? Even when you’re scrolling through hundreds of images in your social media feed, when you see these people’s images you immediately know whose it is. That’s what each of us wants to achieve!
I know it can be a struggle to find your style in photography – it took me over a year to start feeling like I was beginning to develop mine in food photography! In fact, I’m still not convinced that I’m totally there yet, but I have made a ton of progress.
That’s why I want to share some exercises that you can do to help identify your artistic voice today. I personally learned these techniques from a few different books, courses (e.g. Foodtography School) and mentors (I’m currently learning about food photography with Lucia Marecak in her member’s club) and tend to go through these exercises myself every six months or so.
Since I’m a food photographer, I’ll use examples from this genre throughout this post.
Learn how to do food photography from the comfort of your home
Who are you?
Photography is a very personal and subjective art form, which is one of the things I love most about it. Each one of us sees the world in a unique way; two people can look at the same subject and yet see very different things.
Our images reflect aspects of our personality, so a good place to start to find your style in photography is to ask yourself a few questions that can guide your initial choices:
- Which colours do you identify with? Are they warm (i.e. oranges, yellows and reds) or cool (blues, purples and greens)?
- Do you prefer modern, minimalist styles or a more rustic and vintage look?
- Is there a part of your background or current lifestyle that you want to bring into your images?
- What makes you different from everyone else?
- What do you want people to feel when they see your images?
Write down the answers to these questions and bear them in mind when you’re planning future shoots.
Choosing a particular colour palette for your images could be one way of developing a stand-out style as well as consistency in your social media feeds. For example, I absolutely love how Stella from @stellaand uses greens in her images to create this beautiful monochromatic feed and unique style:
Incorporating themes from your lifestyle is also a great way to create a unique images. Perhaps your heritage is very important to you, or maybe the fact that you have a very eco-friendly lifestyle is something you’re passionate about. How can you incorporate these aspects of your life into your images with props and colours?
Ultimately you want the person looking at your photos to feel something, whether it’s nostalgia when they see a plate of milk and cookies in front of a fireplace, warmth and cosiness from a steaming cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream, or even amusement when they see a cat stealing a piece of food from the table! What do you want that feeling to be and what can you use to evoke that emotion through your photos?
Find and save inspiration from various sources
Another way to start discovering styles you like is by looking at other people’s work and saving the pieces you love.
Social media is the perfect place to explore work created by other artists. I say artists because you don’t only have to look at photographers in your niche for inspiration – I follow accounts dedicated to content for home and living, beauty, sports, architecture, the outdoors and more. You’ll be amazed at the ideas that you come up with as you’re looking at different genres of art and photography.
Pinterest is one of my favourite platforms to find inspiration for my own food photography. You can create one or more boards for photography inspiration and save images you like to them for future reference. For example, if I’m going to shoot brownies tomorrow, I might type “brownies photography” into the Pinterest search bar and save all the images I like to a specific board. Then I can look back at them when planning my own shoot and try replicating certain compositions or styling techniques. You can do the same for whatever you need inspiration for!
Instagram is also a good place to store ideas by saving posts that you like. With the Collections feature you can also save the posts into categories, such as colours, foods or off-the-wall creative stuff that you’d love to try one day!
Create a mood board
A mood board is a visual collection of images, text and other graphics that have been gathered into a kind of collage. You can create a general mood board of your favourite images or create one for a specific topic.
Go through all the images you’ve saved recently and pick around 10 of your absolute favourites. Now, put them together and create a mood board. You can do this yourself in Photoshop, Paint, PowerPoint, Canva or even print them and stick them on a piece of card. Personally, I always use Canva because it’s really easy to drag and drop images into the template.
Here are some template mood boards that I created for you in Canva to get started!
Once you’ve filled up your mood board take a good look at the images you’ve chosen and try to answer these questions:
- What do you like about these particular images? Why did they make it onto your mood board?
- Which colour(s) are dominant across the images?
- Can you see any shapes or patterns that repeat?
- Are they busy scenes or more minimalist?
- What kind of lighting do they use? Hard or soft light? (Not sure? Read more about lighting in this post)
- Are the images light and bright, or dark and moody?
- What kind of textures are mostly used? E.g. wood, marble, fabric, tiles
- What angles are the images taken from? E.g. flatlays, straight on, 45 degrees
Now, think about how you can incorporate the things you’ve written down in answer to these questions into your own photos. Maybe you can try to shoot more dark and moody images for a couple of weeks, or perhaps you can play with flatlay compositions a bit more.
Save your mood board somewhere you can see it often, like on your desktop or even print it. This way you’ll see it whenever you’re planning a shoot and will be more likely to use the techniques that you love!
Review your progress
After four to six months, look back at the best images from your own work and compare it to your mood board – has your style evolved and changed? Are there any similarities between your own work and the images you collected for your mood board? If so, congratulations! And if not, please don’t worry – maybe your preferences have changed in the meantime. Create a new brand new mood board and try again!
Example of my mood boards and personal progress
My own mood boards have changed over time too! Below you can see the mood board I created in October 2019 when I was doing the Foodtography School online course and then I’ve shared what my Instagram feed looked like in September 2019 followed by September 2020. Can you see any changes in my photos between 2019 and 2020?
Even though my work in September 2020 isn’t identical to my mood board there is definitely a big improvement from 2019. I created a more consistent look in my images, everything is shot in soft, natural light and I’m using a range of angles and composition techniques, such as the rule of thirds, overhead shots and lots of circles! The general tone is quite light and I’ve used greens, oranges, yellows and hints of red like the colour palette in the mood board.
The moment I saw this improvement in my work I realised that I had been feeling a little bit stuck creatively for the past few weeks. I still didn’t really feel like my own style shone through my images. So what did I do? I created a new mood board in October 2020:
And below are some of my own favourite images from the past couple of months. I think there is a vast improvement again and I can see some similarities to the mood board, such as some dark and moody images, a mixture of minimalist and busier table scenes, more contrast between light and shadow, the colours are more harmonious and I’ve included a human element too.
I hope this shows you how powerful mood boards can be to help you find your style in photography, whatever niche you’re in! Have a go and share your mood board with me via email or on social media.
Experiment and allow your style to change
You might be wondering how on earth you’re supposed to find your one true style when you like so many different types of images. I totally get it and still sometimes feel the same way!
I love some bright, clean minimalist shots. I’m also drawn to dark and moody scenes with lots of contrast and shadows. But then there’s the beautiful, rustic and vintage style too! How do I choose?!
Basically, you don’t have to. At least not at first! Simply keep repeating the process of saving and analysing the images that catch your eye. Bring elements of these images into your own work and see what you like and dislike, then do more of what you like! You’ll soon see changes in your photography, maybe even hints of a style coming through.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with new things, even if it seems wildly different from your usual work. I know everyone says that you must have a cohesive and beautiful Instagram feed, but I found that this mindset limited and restricted me from being more creative. Once I started sharing all my work, regardless of whether it “fit” in my feed, I felt a lot freer and that’s when I noticed my own style starting to develop.
Without trying and failing or succeeding you’ll never truly know what you love. Yes, this process takes time, but it does work if you’re patient, experimental and shoot regularly!
Go and discover your artistic voice!
I hope you enjoyed this post about how to find your style in photography! Here’s what you can do right now to get started on your path of discovery:
- Take 30 minutes to answer the questions in the “Who are you?” section above.
- Browse “[your niche here] photography” Pinterest and Instagram for 30 minutes and save your favourite images.
- Choose 10-15 of your absolute favourite images and add them to a mood board, like this one.
- Analyse your mood board using the questions in the “Create a mood board” section above.
- Save your mood board somewhere you can see it often and try to include elements from those images into your own work.
- Review your work in 6 months and repeat the process to evolve and grow!
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