Do you have a "photographic style"?

[hjulenissen]

Surely you're not serious! With a brush you pick up a thick impasto or a thin glaze and make deliberate strokes and touches. Your brushstrokes are as individual as your handwriting (at least if you still can do cursive). Do you really think how you point your camera, or how you press the shutter button constitutes a "style."

I can't paint at all, never tried it. Do you think that however I hold a brush constitues a "style"? Do you think that there is some clever thought behind how I hold a brush, and do you think that I do it consistently from stroke to stroke or painting to painting?

Just like peoples handwriting, how they walk, how they make food and what they search for on the internet is somewhat individual, I think that the way they operate their cameras is somewhat individual. If the word "style" is a red herring for you, fine, lets call it something else. Since english is not my native tongue anyways, let me suggest a word that probably carries no connotations to you. Håndlag? The english translation would be something like "the way in which one carries out work; often used in a positive manner, i.e. having a good håndlag".

-h

[AreBee]

Andrew,

Careful study and a lot of thought over several years.

Thank you.

[Otto Phocus]

Only if you think that definitions are exclusive :-)

Even if they are not mutually exclusive, both concepts are difficult to define.

[jjj]

Explain what you mean by "style," Jeremy.

Not sure if you are being obtuse or argumentative.
Not sure how to answer that, because if you've got your age and still need such very basic things explaining, are you really going to understand it now?  
Anyway lets try really simple - Style is a distinctive appearance or look. And if you need that explaining to you, then obtuse it is.

With a brush you pick up a thick impasto or a thin glaze and make deliberate strokes and touches. Your brushstrokes are as individual as your handwriting (at least if you still can do cursive). Do you really think how you point your camera, or how you press the shutter button constitutes a "style."

Two things wrong with that argument. Firstly comparing end result with process, brushstrokes are the end result of however you paint and holding a camera is a part of the process. Comparing how you hold a brush and where you position a camera would be more meaningful. Platon's work with his seated portraits is immediately recognisable because of his camera positioning . Which is a major part of his style.



A change of grip or handhold  on camera rarely has any impact on the photo, particularly as you do not even need to hold a camera to take a photo.

Secondly if brushstrokes were indeed that individual, then all the art experts that have been fooled by forgeries over the years would not have been.
As already illustrated by Isaac in the case of Rembrandt and all the Rembrandts that he did not in fact paint.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Style is a distinctive appearance or look.

That general description works for me.

And in addition, a single person can explore different styles. Take for example Piet Mondriaan, best known for his abstract geometric paintings, like "Victory Boogie Woogie". He started out as a landscape painter and later was influenced by, and then adopted, a Cubist style of abstraction, which evolved into his best known abstract geometric style.

And as to what some others have mentioned, technique or skill is something different, and can be (with practice and the right tools) more easily copied.

Cheers,
Bart

[RSL]

Anyway lets try really simple - Style is a distinctive appearance or look. And if you need that explaining to you, then obtuse it is.

Okay. The Golden Gate bridge has a very distinctive appearance or look. It's one-of-a-kind. Is that a "style?"

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Okay. The Golden Gate bridge has a very distinctive appearance or look. It's one-of-a-kind. Is that a "style?"

A single object is unique, that is not a style. Knowing the other works designed by the architect(s), may that show if a similar style (is not the same as technique) was used for all objects.

Cheers,
Bart

[AreBee]

Russ,

To me, unless there's something about an artist's work that makes it almost always identifiable as his, there's no "style" there.

BobDavid

[AreBee]

Andrew,

I maintain that there is such a thing as style, but that style alone is not sufficient to identify a photographer.

BobDavid

[amolitor]

Yep. That was a pretty good thread.

[RSL]

A single object is unique, that is not a style. Knowing the other works designed by the architect(s), may that show if a similar style (is not the same as technique) was used for all objects.

Ah, so Jeremy's idea that "a distinctive appearance or look" represents a "style" doesn't hold water? A "style" requires repetition? But it's "not the same as technique?" How does a "style" differ from a "technique?" Would Winogrand's frequent tilt out of the horizontal plane represent a "style?" If so, would his photographs aligned with the horizontal plane also be part of his "style," or would they be aberrations?

[Otto Phocus]

Rita Gilbert in her book Living with Art describes style as "a characteristic or group of characteristics that we can identify as constant, recurring, or coherent.” She also wrote  “Artistic style is the sum of constant, recurring or coherent traits identified with a certain individual or group.”

If we are to accept her concept of style, then a style does require some level of repetition. That repetition can either be by the individual or a group of individuals.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Ah, so Jeremy's idea that "a distinctive appearance or look" represents a "style" doesn't hold water?

How do you come to that conclusion?

A "style" requires repetition?

Are you serious?

But it's "not the same as technique?" How does a "style" differ from a "technique?"

see previous.

Would Winogrand's frequent tilt out of the horizontal plane represent a "style?"

Not in isolation, or do you want to declare any image that is tilted, a Wynogrand style???

Cheers,
Bart

[amolitor]

I don't think "style", however you define it, is particularly meaningful without repetition. It might exist in a single object, but it's not apparent as an identifiable entity until you see it repeated.

This especially applies to photography, where anything can be an accident. It's pretty hard to just "wing it" and get lucky on a bridge, but it's easy on a photo.

In the simplest case, whatever you take style to be, you need to see several instances to identify which parts are shared between then instances. You might see a big red canvas and say "the style is big and red" but later you might see more canvases and realize that it's actually "big and monochrome" because there's a blue one and a green one too. The "style" was arguable there all along, but you couldn't identify it.

This is starting to sound like philosophical navel gazing.

[Some Guy]

Sometimes style, at least for me, is getting into a rut and shooting the same thing over and over again.  Maybe to the point it becomes a cliche like railroad tracks (Love trains, but enough!), sunsets, lighthouses, trees, flowers, ocean waves, etc.

Sometimes I wonder about copycats who want to know "How do I 'duplicate' this shot?" against someone who ventures out and does something on their own.  Duplicating a style doesn't seem that original - or even a style, imho.

SG

[Otto Phocus]

But trying to reproduce someone else's style can be a good learning tool.

I have looked at photographs I have admired and tried to do "something" like it... sometimes with humourous results.  But it does help me learn specific aspects of composition.

[RSL]

How do you come to that conclusion?

A single object is unique, that is not a style.

Are you serious? (about repetition)

You said so yourself.

see previous.

You're the one who said there's a difference between a "style" and a "technique." What's the distinction?

Not in isolation, or do you want to declare any image that is tilted, a Wynogrand style???

I'm not sure. How would you describe a "Winogrand style?"

[amolitor]

I think "a distinctive appearance or look" is perfectly OK. It's a definition, for sure.

Can I now answer questions about "style"? Let's try out some of the usual questions, and see if the answers become more obvious:

How can I get a distinctive appearance or look for myself?
Can I identify an artist from the distinctive appearance or look in the work?
How does one develop a distinctive appearance or look?
Is a distinctive appearance or look the same as a technique?

[RSL]

Strikes me that if you're trying to get a distinctive appearance or look you're not really trying to get a photograph; you're trying to create a "style."

[hjulenissen]

One might say that Bach or Mozart has a recognizable style in the way the they write scores for musicians to play on various instruments. Certain musical elements are commonly found in Back and seldom found in Mozart - and visa versa.

This does not necessarily make Bach uniquely identifiable, other composers of that era (I believe that Bach was considered old-fashioned by his contemporaries) might make use of similar instrumentation, similar melodic lines etc that makes the music "similar". Even an artificial "Bach generator" might make "plausible" Bach-type music (but not "great" Bach-type music). A Bach expert might know all of Bachs (known) work and instantly recognize if a piece of music is actually Bach, but I am guessing that she won't have a 100% hit-rate on hitherto unknown Bach music vs works in a similar style?

Composing music can be seen as navigating in a large landscape of possibilities (88 keys on a piano, 10 fingers on a human, 64 16th-notes in a 4/4 beat, 3 minutes in a typical pop-song) while restricting yourself to an incredibly narrow subset of constraints (e.g. harmonic and temporal structure) that might be called style to produce music that is recognizable as e.g. "Western pop music" or "Bollywood dance tune" while containing unique and new moments. Successful musical composition is a hard-to-describe/predict balance between the safe and the unsafe. White noise adhers to few such stylistic elements, but most people don't recognize white noise as art. 12-tone music is not my cup of tea, either.

Therein lies my belief: "style" can be thought of as those broad features that one or a group of artists use consistently or partially. It does not (should not) be used to describe the quality of art nor the complexity of the art.

Some think that photography is "easy" while painting is "hard" because any photographer can get a visually recognizable landscape image, while a painter might need years of training (and lots of talent) to paint a visually recognizable landscape. I tend to think that this is wrong or irrelevant. Whenever something is "easy", we as humans tends to raise the bar correspondingly. While jazz musicians may snob at certain electronic artists for not being able to play instruments themselves (rather sampling others work), there will be a competition between those electronic artists for doing their thing as good as possible. Some will be perceived as "the best of their generation" and chances are that they will have to have lots of talent and do lots of work to reach that position.

-h