This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. There are some photographers that I follow on Flickr, and I can always tell that an image in my stream is one of theirs even before I see the label. They seem to have come up with an original cohesive and consistent style; a vision of subject, composition, and editing that is unique to them.
I think editing is only one component of such style, but it is an important one. And it’s the consistency that is striking to me. I have been asking myself if I have this kind of consistency, and I think the answer is “not yet”. I tend to hop between subjects and am still playing with various compositions. And in editing I generally use a few “go to” tools and mess with them until I think the image “looks better”. What I should be doing, I think, is sticking with a limited range of subjects, working on a limited range of compositions, and editing to achieve a consistant look shot to shot. The problem is deciding what, specifically, to focus on in each of these things so as to achieve my consistent vision…
Consistency is mainly a marketing thing. It makes you a reliable product. You hear it expressed as a sort of rule but its simplistic and IMHO unlikely to help with producing great stuff. Might help in making a buck though, which can be important. Having an interest and a project will likely eventually lead to photos that speak to each other without having a preconceived notion of consistency.
Consistency is only important on a project by project basis and is more on the business side. What is worse than inconsistency is being perceived as boring.
The images on that website look like mostly lighting composites. Walking around the location with a speedlight on a monopod and taking individual shots of illumination on objects in the scene, then compositing it all together using masks afterwards. Look up Mike Kelley on fstoppers for further info on those techniques.
Adding to the consistency question. There are of course great photographers whose whole raison d’être is repetition and consistency. Most strikingly perhaps Bernd and Hilla Becher as has been discussed on this site before.
Here are a couple videos that may better explain what I mean by consistency:
The idea is not to be able to consistently produce the same kind of photo (ie the commercial concept of consistency), but to consistently carry out your vision and to gain a recognisable voice in photography. I recently saw a fantastic Irving Penn exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, and one thing that struck me is the consistency of voice across his career. It’s not that all his photos looked the same - they don’t. It’s that you can see one of his photos, and whatever the subject, you instantly think of him as the photographer.
I get what you are saying. I would use the word maturity. We all start from somewhere but we need to grow and mature. At the same time, voice is a tricky idea. I find it common for cultural icons and historical figures to be recognized for one thing, but they are really much more than that; or that one thing isn’t representative of who they are but it just stuck.
Some years ago I had a good time developing a personal style, which even made a stir over the internet. At the time I used to use a tiny little camera, I shoot only jpeg and got a lot of fun. Digital elaboration was bold and part of the creative process. Those days are gone, nowadays I am lost with complex cameras and complex raw converters with which I have never been in tune. What does all this mean? I don’t know, maybe cameras and raw converters are a drag for me every time I switch myself to creative mode. I am just a simple person.
I used “voice” mainly because my other creative world is music, and that’s the term they use a lot: “finding your voice”. It’s the difference between a great session player who can play any type of music any time, and a recording artist. The one person is a technically consistent player, and there’s a lot of work available for that person, but they are a chameleon in some ways: they don’t have a personal style - they can play on any record and blend in. The second person is an artistically consistent person. They have a singular style that is recognisable. The employment opportunity for the second person is more precarious, but if they find an audience who likes their unique “voice”, they can make it.
Another point. Generally speaking much of what makes a photograph including both the look and the “voice” (useful term @Isaac) is created if not fixed at capture. Personally I’d say that the better the photographer, the more of what is important about the photograph is fixed at capture. Processing and printing is the finishing layer that polishes the diamond. If it’s not good sooc it’s never going to be great.
Situation, composition, light, perspective and subject can’t really change much after capture. The idea that look is about postprocessing is false the above are more important. Perhaps postprocessing can be a megaphone when your artistic voice is weak but if you have nothing to say it won’t really matter if it’s loud. (stretching that metaphor )
So we define the look of our photos at all levels except the most superficial.
I’ve found with digital that I’m making fewer artistic decisions with exposure at the scene. Instead I’m trying to capture the full dynamic range of the scene. Sometimes that involves bracketing.
My of my artistry at the scene is composition, and maybe determining the aperture.
I think you are discounting the main artistic question which is what you choose to photograph. That’s really the main thing. After that there are lots and lots of variables. Your camera settings and your post processing are articulations of that main decision of what to photograph.
I do agree with that thinking, but I’ve also found that sometimes there’s a compelling composition in an otherwise ill-framed capture, teased-out with judicious cropping. I try to not shoot with that crutch in mind, but sometimes I do realize I can’t get the framing I want in the places I can stand, and that some cropping will be needed to achieve the vision I considered “in-scene”…
I deleted a sentence saying that cropping can change perspective and composition. I don’t want to come across as a purist of any kind. There are so many ways of working and so many can be good.
I just want to emphasize that the look of a photograph is dependent on what the photographer sees. What scenes are in front of them and what is seen in that scene.
No really, you just said something I’d considered writing about earlier in the thread but decided to leave for another day - the photographic medium as an artistic device is uniquely constrained by “What scenes are in front of them and what is seen in that scene.” Well-put…
Artists in other media build their depictions from mental visualizations, maybe aided by things such as photographs. No, we picture-takers start with measurements straight from the scene, and go from that…
I’d agree with that, and I would add that is also how you choose to view that subject.
Interesting. I am just the opposite. I find that with modern mirrorless cameras, because I can see the exposure as I frame, I am more apt to try to get creative with the exposure. A dirty little secret of mine is that though I always shoot in raw + jpeg, I almost never develop from raw any more. I’ve really tweaked my in camera picture profiles (Olympus is very customizable that way), so I’d say about 90% of the time I get it 90% to where I want it in camera. I almost never need to push exposures in post anymore because I’ve typically gotten the exposure I wanted dialed in the camera
This reminds me of an article I saw in a doctor’s office waiting room in a magazine I wasn’t previously aware of…
Excellence in, Excellence Out.
I use the term “excellence” frequently in articles and presentations because I believe they are words to live by and certainly goals to photograph by. If you shoot with the mindset that you will just take a picture and “fix” it in Lightroom or PhotoShop later, then you are greatly limiting your image potential. For that reason, I spend a few seconds more to dial-in every photo-graph with all the great capabilities my camera has to offer. I love my landscapes to have a lot of punch so I set my Nikon D810 saturation to full and sharpness to 7 out of 10 in my camera picture control settings. Sometimes I will add a bit of the new clarity setting as well, to give some extra impact. These settings will immediately allow my images to pop with colour right out of the camera. This means I have much less to do, if anything, in post processing, and I also get so see how amazing the image is going to look right on the back of the camera. A quick glance at the LCD in image review can encourage me to continue to tweak settings and adjust the image on the fly until I feel it is perfect.
Gee - I like the diversity of opinions we have here …
I was stunned reading this. My approach is quite different: I struggled for “getting things right” when I was shooting film. You can’t save a under- or overexposed negative and you can’t correct an error during development later on. Get it right the first time - there are no second place winners in darkrooms.
In photography darkrooms - it can be a sensible matter, so let’s all be very precise here …
Digital imagery gives me so much more options to fuck-up and recover that I never hesitated to take a risk or do things “wrong”.
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