How Do I Find My Style?

Finding your photography style is like setting sail through murky waters in search for the gold....that is buried underneath the mud... and the current is constantly pushing you in all the opposite directions.

However, sailing through the murky water of uncertainty and curiosity, navigating through mistakes, you eventually will come across a style that feels like home, something that you captured all on your own. The style where you take that picture and realize you found that gold that you sailed through the murky waters for. But this process takes time, it takes the hardships of trying every style that you have seen on everyone else's website's. It takes going out and failing a couple times for any of it to be worth it. it takes that trial and error over, and over again and makes you examine every photograph you take to the very last pixel.

Photography is trial and error. From the moment you click the shutter you don't know if you got the shot you wanted or not. Most of the time we fail. But we learn to get better pictures through our failures. We examine those pictures after we shot them and we think, "How can I make my picture better next time" This trial and error also comes into play when a young photographer is trying to find their style. We take that picture and when it just doesn't feel like we are connecting to it, we think that same thing: "How can I make my picture better next time" so we go home and we search online, other creators pages, and deep scroll through Pinterest. But the truth is searching through everyone else's images and their style isn't going to help you find yours. Look around your house. Your town. Your family. THERE is inspiration in everything, you just haven't found it yet because you're hyper focused on your favorite photographers work.

Finding your style is hard, I'm writing this blog about finding your style and I haven't even found mine yet. I take portraits of people, landscape, black and white photos, I recently even took pictures of a wedding, and I take portraits of animals and I really enjoy that. But I'm recently finding out that style is overrated. I know I've been talking a lot about style In this article, but I honestly think that style can hurt your creativity. A photograph without your soul doesn't have your stamp on authenticity on it. And that is what the world is lacking- authentic photographers, not "good" photographers.

So while taking that first step in sailing in the murky waters to find your style is good, Being yourself in this process is the best way to shine the light in the waters to find that picture perfect style you are going for. Just be authentic, create your own rules for you own photography and don't take any other rules from those other photographers style. Because the truth is, your style isn't "Your style" unless you go through those hardships and come to the realization on your own that finally.. finally you have a picture that bares your soul through your work and you can see yourself in every picture you take. You find that buried treasure in all the criticism, doubts, and you look at it, and you just smile.