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Author Topic: Developing a personal style  (Read 16366 times)

Eric Kellerman

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #20 on: August 09, 2015, 04:57:04 pm »

Eric,

Does your experience still hold true when the nude is male?

Rob,

To tell you the truth, I don't know. But my guess would be yes.
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John Camp

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #21 on: August 09, 2015, 05:12:36 pm »

One of the problems that photographers have to deal with is that, unlike other art forms, basic photography is pretty easy. To reach a level basic competence (by which I mean, your work has some commercial or artistic value) in other art forms, like painting, music, dance or architecture, typically takes years. A few hard weeks of work in photography will will generally get you to a level of competence that could even generate sales, if you pick the right commercial venue. IMHO, this tends to attract people who really don't care to work very hard at an art form, but yearn to be some kind of an artist...so they pick up a camera, and they eventually begin searching for things like style.

Again, this is my opinion, but I think that most serious artists or even businesslike commercial people tend to do things the other way around: that is, they have an interest, and then they adopt an art form that will capture that interest. That combination -- an interest that can be captured by a particular mechanism (dance, drawing, photography) leads almost automatically to what we call style. That doesn't mean that you always shoot the same thing, because you may be interested in more than one thing. But even in that case, in pursuing your first interest, you probably gravitated toward a particular "look" simply because you like it and think it's effective, and so you carry that over into other subjects. Robert Mapplethorpe was interested in sex, portraits, celebrities and flowers, but the "look" is very similar across all those categories, because he found that look appealing and to most accurately or effectively represent the way he saw things.

The push to develop a 'style," I think, is a problem mostly for those people who really aren't deeply interested in anything in particular (or at least, nothing in particular that can be photographed.) Although some people might not believe this (especially if you ARE an artist) I observed over quite an extensive career of reporting that many, many people really aren't deeply interested in much -- often not even deeply interested even in their families or in their jobs. That doesn't necessarily mean they're stupid, it just means that they aren't deeply interested in very much; I once briefly dated a woman who was interested in going to parties -- not documenting them, or commenting on them, but just being there. Having fun. She didn't even have a stereo, or read. She wasn't stupid, she just wasn't interested in much. If you look at all the millions of hours frittered away on Facebook, Twitter, messaging, browsing the net, etc., you realize that many people are quite content to eat, sleep, drink and message. If one of those people begins to feel a vague yearning to become an artist -- usually because he/she likes the idea, rather than the reality -- then photography is a natural choice, because you get to carry around some neat equipment and because, basically, it just isn't very hard. Until, of course, somebody tells you that you need a "style." Then, if you're not interested in much, you're sort of stuck. You wander around, doing a little street here, a landscape there, a portrait of friends, some snapshots of family...there's no style because you're just going through the motions of photography. If you get desperate enough -- photography equipment isn't cheap -- you start looking for articles that tell you how to develop a style.

In my opinion (I say again) if you really want to develop style, you should put the camera down, and spend some serious time thinking about what you're deeply interested in. If there is something, go shoot that. If the honest answer is "not too much," then maybe you should consider dropping photography for a faster internet connection and maybe a subscription to Netflix.

One subject matter, of course, is almost always of interest -- which is why we've seen the spectacular rise of the selfie. Not that anyone else wants to look at them.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2015, 05:19:16 pm by John Camp »
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landscapephoto

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #22 on: August 10, 2015, 03:08:31 am »

Even ignoring Mann's extensive portfolio of color work, anyone who thinks that "Immediate Family" and "At Twelve" in any way resemble "Southern Landscapes" and "Proud Flesh" is smoking something delicious.

That is probably the reason we do not understand each other. For me, all these works are in the same "personal style". I see strong similarities between them: the particular tonal and out of focus rendering of large format, the frequent use of aerial perspective, similarities in the way the pictures are composed, etc... I don't smoke, BTW.
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GrahamBy

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #23 on: August 10, 2015, 11:52:04 am »

Re male nudes

To tell you the truth, I don't know. But my guess would be yes.

That's an interesting question : my impression is that male nudes are often more formulaic (largely about representations of strength, the cliché rear view of a muscular man turning something big and heavy). But then the number of male nudes available to see on a site like 500px must be about 1% of the number of female nudes... most of which are formulaic and boring (value judgements mine, of course). And I don't have the same hormonal involvement.

However I wonder if part of the problem of this discussion is that there seem to me to be two diverging definitions of "art photography": version A is linked to esthetics and the subliminal transmission of ideas that we tend to think of as beauty. Version B is about what will get sold at a Christey's auction, where the notion of beauty is given very short shrift.

I would think that most landscape photographers, photographers of the nude, and even the majority of street and and urbex photographers fall into category A. i'd be willing to argue (maybe not very well) that Diane Arbus's images are category A, since they are transmit (to me) some sort of emotional state.

In contrast, the Dusseldorf School, coming from a documentary philosopy, objectivism and so on, seems to want to be in category B: in fact that is my reading of the explicit attempt to rebel against the rejection of the Nazi appropriation of photography viz Leni Riefenstahl (I'll interject "baby with the bathwater").

Now against that background, it's unlikely that anyone is going to have a show in which they range across new objectivism and sensual nudes... (I'll count someone like Ion Grigorescu under "non-sensual nudes") and indeed I suspect that what comes out as a personal style is in some way one's relationship to the world: sensual, hedonist, critical, polemical... and that is something one develops from a lot of sources, without a camera in hand. And it might change over time, and/or one might have several concurrent interests expressed in distinct portfolios.
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MarkL

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #24 on: August 10, 2015, 04:02:25 pm »

One of the problems that photographers have to deal with is that, unlike other art forms, basic photography is pretty easy. To reach a level basic competence (by which I mean, your work has some commercial or artistic value) in other art forms, like painting, music, dance or architecture, typically takes years. A few hard weeks of work in photography will will generally get you to a level of competence that could even generate sales, if you pick the right commercial venue. IMHO, this tends to attract people who really don't care to work very hard at an art form, but yearn to be some kind of an artist...so they pick up a camera, and they eventually begin searching for things like style.

<snip>

This post is excellent and I think a real elephant in the room where photography is concerned. With the violin a week in I could only just about hold it and the bow correctly let alone play even one suitable note.

Your point about people not being interested in much is also very apt. A large majority of people are totally content to consume rather than be driven to create anything at all I have lot count of the amount of times people have been confused as to why I spend so much effort making photographs when I do not sell them - they are just not able to understand.
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Isaac

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #25 on: August 10, 2015, 06:44:05 pm »

…why I spend so much effort making photographs when I do not sell them - they are just not able to understand.

"Life is rather a lark, you knaow, fun is where you find it…"
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amolitor

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #26 on: August 10, 2015, 06:53:55 pm »

Yes, photography is basically easy.

As an Art, therefore, it distills are down to what we think of as its essence in these modern, degenerate, times. There is no real technical barrier. There is no requirement to master physical technique, or technically complex tasks. You needn't learn to grind pigments, mix colors, or judge marble. You just press the button.

This leaves us naked before the muse: we better have damned idea, or people are gonna notice.
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NancyP

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #27 on: August 12, 2015, 09:29:47 pm »

I wonder how different the range of student response (creative seeing) is in life drawing class versus life photography class. I loved my life drawing classes. One of the advantages of life drawing class is that multiple responses can be made to the same lighting conditions - emphasize or de-emphasize shadow, exaggerate shape for emphasis, etc. You can't do that with a camera, your main creativity is going to be in lighting, framing, posing - only choice in a classroom situation would be framing, since everyone is seeing the same lighting and posing.

Style? I look at this issue more as "what are you interested in, and how do you make it look good according to your taste?" I suspect that visual style must be developed before photographic style. One gets unconscious and conscious visual biases over a lifetime of looking.
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Eric Kellerman

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #28 on: August 15, 2015, 03:40:32 pm »

Jörg Colberg's latest piece is interesting in this respect: http://cphmag.com/
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Developing a personal style
« Reply #29 on: August 15, 2015, 05:56:52 pm »

Jörg Colberg's latest piece is interesting in this respect: http://cphmag.com/
That is an excellent commentary. Thanks for sharing the link.
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-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)
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