Define Your Photography Style: A Practical Guide

Moody portrait of a woman with dark wavy hair and dark red lipstick against a softly blurred forest background

How To Define Your Style
by Aaron Nace
April 30, 2014
Add to
favorites

description

Style is impossible to define precisely and it is still the thing clients value most when choosing who to hire. This tutorial works through a three-step exercise borrowed from graphic design: five words for what you love about your photography, three positive words for what you do not want it to be, and a place to keep the list where it will actually change how you shoot.

Moody portrait used to illustrate defining your photographic style

How to Define Your Photographic Style

Define your style

Individual style is an intrepidly fickle thing. It’s impossible to truly define, and at the same time it’s critically important to a career in virtually any creative industry. As photographers we’re no strangers to the pursuit of style, because it’s what clients value most when deciding who to hire for a project.

What Style Actually Is

Style is an undefinable sense of consistency across the works an artist creates, unifying them in a unique way.

In a shallow sense it can be attributed to a common appearance, subject matter or emotion. You can create style by building a sense of unity between each piece of work you make, and that can be anything from a specific lighting setup to a certain approach to post-processing.

More accurately, though, style is the heart and soul of your creativity. You can’t create it by picking an editing method at random. It’s closer to a sense of voice within your work, a reflection of you and the brand you want to share with the world.

Why Great Photographers Stay Recognizable

Examine the work of any truly great photographer and you’ll notice that even when they explore alternative technical methods, the work still reads as consistent. Somehow they retain that voice while their technical implementation evolves. Defining their own style is one of the most common challenges inexperienced photographers face.

Moody portrait of a woman wrapped in a deep red hooded cloak

An Exercise Borrowed from Graphic Design

In a previous career I was a graphic designer, and a big part of that work is understanding a client’s brand and communicating it through design.

There was one exercise I had clients complete to help me understand the brand I was helping them build. You’re going to use it now to better understand your own.

Start by getting a pen and paper. Choose a relatively nice piece of paper that you’ll keep for a while, not a napkin or a torn sheet of newspaper. Choose something that won’t trivialize what you’re about to write.

Step 1: Five Words for What You Love

Write 5 words that describe what you love most about your photography. Interpret that however you like: adjectives, emotions, feelings, colors, anything that comes to mind representing what you love about photography.

Step 2: Three Compliments You Don’t Want

Create a new list. On it, write just 3 words reflecting what you DON’T want your photography to be. The catch is that all 3 have to be positive things — think of them as compliments you don’t want. This won’t be easy, so take your time.

Step 3: Put It Somewhere You’ll See It

Stick the paper on your fridge, tattoo it on your arm, or slide it into your wallet. Where doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s somewhere you can refer back to often.

Dark, moody portrait of a woman with long dark hair in dim lighting

Keep the Lists in Mind While Shooting

From here on, take a moment before each shoot to reflect on the list. Knowing what you want your photography to be is critical to a sense of unique style, but what matters even more, and gets overlooked, is understanding what you want your work not to be.

In my case, I’m a beauty photographer and I don’t want my work to be “sexy” — that’s something I keep close at hand during every shoot.

If you’d like to see an example of this exercise, head over to my blog, where I’ve written about my own list and why I chose each word.

Full-body portrait of a woman in a red dress in a foggy, dimly lit forest with a shadowy figure in the background

The Evolution of Your Style

As you pursue the journey of life you’ll inevitably change. Experience deepens your understanding of yourself, which in turn expands the core of your style. Eventually you’ll be so comfortable with its evolving nature that understanding it becomes second nature. Until then, pull that list out and alter it, remove items, add new ones, and keep it up to date with who you are and, most importantly, what your priorities are.

Why Naming What You Don’t Want Works

Lists of aspirations are easy and they rarely change how anyone shoots, because almost every positive word feels like something you’d accept. The second list is what makes the exercise useful: ruling out three compliments forces a real decision, and it’s the only part of the list that will ever stop you mid-shoot. Style, in practice, is the accumulation of things you declined to do.

Final Thoughts

Style isn’t a preset or an editing recipe, it’s the consistent voice that survives your technical choices changing. Write five words for what you love about your photography, three positive words for what you don’t want it to be, keep the list where you’ll see it, and revisit it before each shoot and whenever your priorities shift.