Jack of all trades style

[Designer]

.. the fact I ain't got no style..

I think I see the problem.

Why do you think your art must exhibit a certain "style"?

Did you read somewhere that in order for art to be valid it has to have a "style"?

Spend less time reading and more time making art.

 

[runnah]

As far as style goes I like to refer back to my youth when I was a hardcore snowboarder. Style was a huge thing in the sport, but to get style you had to learn a trick to begin with and you had to practice it a lot. Once you had it learned fully then you could start adding you're only personal "style" to it.

 

[nerwin]

.. the fact I ain't got no style..

I think I see the problem.

Why do you think your art must exhibit a certain "style"?

Did you read somewhere that in order for art to be valid it has to have a "style"?

Spend less time reading and more time making art.

Yes, I'm beginning to realize that haha.

 

[robbins.photo]

no, trying to do my own thing but confused on which direction I should go. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to photography, so I guess I'm just going to shoot what I like and if some people don't like the fact I ain't got no style, then so be it.

My basic thought here is simple, I shoot what I like. I don't try to market the end product and as such the entire original article fell into the "moot point" category for me.

For those who do try to market the end results, well they might find some of that information applies. But as a dedicated amateur it simply doesn't apply to me.

 

[Derrel]

The author DL Cade wants people who will SHARE their images on his site, 500px....meaning peoople who will willingly upload their work to HIS SITE, for FREE. Make no mistake--there are some nice images on 500px, soley based on volume and the way the world works and the fact that photography is a popular hobby enjoyed by millions of people, but 500px is guilty of being one of the most homogeneous/plastic/oversaturated/shiny picture sites on the web. It thrives not on originality, as much as on providing a steady diet of massively over-Photoshopped images. If it were a restaurant, it would be McDonald's.

Really skilled, innovative, visionary, or even just plain old "good" photographers are NOT giving away images as grist for 500px: no, skilled photographers are showing their images on their OWN sites, not uploading them into the vast sea that is 500px.

 

[The_Traveler]

OP,
Stop worrying about validating how you do things by someone else's standards.
You can shoot a million different kinds of things in a million different ways and it doesn't make any difference to anyone but you.
The author of that piece has his own opinions and it doesn't make any difference why he says this. If what he says resonates with you, great. If not, no biggie.

Eventually you will decide what you like to do for yourself.

 

[rexbobcat]

It's ironic that he talks about having photography that stands out as yours when most of the photographers' work on 500px is indiscernible from everyone else's on the site, including the editor's picks.

Photos of sexy light-skinned women retouched to perfection, oversaturated ultra-wide angle landscapes, birds shot with an ultra-telephoto, and foreign men with lots of age lines with clarity cranked to max.

That's literally the entire 500px community.

Finding a niche is great, but don't force yourself into one because of a 500px advertisement.

 

[Dave442]

Don't take a point from someone's top five list as a reason to give up photography. I have even seen other "experts" give just the opposite opinion on that point.

 

[manaheim]

Blah blah blah. People overthink this crap.

Shoot what interests you. Don't work to find "what you like", "your genre" or "your style". These are not things that you plan or direct. These are things that come out as an artifact of who you are and what you have to say.

What is your voice?
Who are your influences?

Really, who the hell cares?

What matters is the work you produce. If you are true to your own artistic desires, your work will speak as a body all by itself. Let the critics sit around and argue over your style. Then you can laugh, ignore them, and go take some more pictures.

 

[dennybeall]

If you have a photojournalism approach your style may be to capture the scene as real as possible and tell the story with one photo. You as a photographer won't have a personal style that you force onto a photo such as always in HDR or leaning to yellow or totally blemish free skin or always bokah to the max. The shot will dictate what style is needed.
If you want to be an artist that's perfectly fine just don't expect everybody to want to be one also!
And understand NO matter what you do NOT EVERYBODY will like your work!!!

 

[Fred Berg]

The beauty of photography is it lets you do your own thing, so why do anyone else's?

 

[EIngerson]

There is no direction in photography. Take photos of what you want to take photos of. Don't stress the small stuff.

 

[acparsons]

All genres, all the time. I love shooting everything.

 

[sashbar]

You seem to be confounding content with style.
When I see people who shoot a lot of lots of different things, they often seem to have no particular 'style' because they are essentially just pointing at what they see that is interesting at the moment and taking the picture - as it is.
People who go further than that are using their own particular feelings about the situation to be expressed in how they take and edit the picture.
Typically people with such specific ideas develop their own very specific ways of shooting and that often limits the content to that which fits the style.
For example, Chris (Binga) has a very distinct style that probably wouldn't work for landscapes although it might for wildlife. The content is less important than the expression of it.
Sometimes style overwhelms content like much overdone HDR or pointless street photography.

My feeling is that people who shoot 'everything' often shoot nothing specific very, very well.

If that's the case, then what I'm doing is a waste of time. Maybe photography isn't for me. Hmm, something I'll have to think about.

This is basically the same as with sports. Let's say you are doing it for yourself and you like to play a bit of soccer, a bit of basketball, do a bit of swimming, some cycling and then in the evening you play a bit of poker sometimes with friends or pump iron in the gym. What are the chances that you will be as good as a basketball player, or a swimmer or a bodybuilder? Pretty slim, and even that sounds optimistic. Is it a waste of time then? Not at all, it is good for your health, good for your mind, you meet friends, girls are all yours, and doing sports is better than taking drugs. You spend you time really well.

Now, if you have any ambitions to excel, you have to specialise. You need to choose what you like most and what you are best at. You need to see what possibilities are there for you in any sport. Then you need to decide and concentrate on it, devote your time to learn specifics, practice and master your chosen sport or, if we talk about photography, your genre. Great thing about this approach is that you can develop further and have a feeling of really achieving something, and it will boost your self-confidence in other walks of life, even if it is still just a hobby.

By the end of the day it is all about your ambitions, about what you want to achieve and about what you want from your hobby, whether you like the process or the result. Probably it is also down to a character, some people are more perfectionists than others and they usually specialise. Others have more hedonistic approach and they want to bite every cake on the table. For a hobbyist both ways are perfectly OK in my view.

As for this old Jack of all trades vs master of one dilemma, the truth, in my opinion, as always, lies somewhere in between. Doing everything without concentrating on anything is as bad as narrowing you field of interest too much and never trying to broaden your horizons. Where exactly this "in between" lies depends on your sphere of interest. In photography, in my opinion it is somewhere closer to being master of one.

If you are mastering your favourite genre and sometimes venture into other genres to enrich your photographic arsenal, you will be OK.

 

[sashbar]

If you have a photojournalism approach your style may be to capture the scene as real as possible and tell the story with one photo. You as a photographer won't have a personal style that you force onto a photo such as always in HDR or leaning to yellow or totally blemish free skin or always bokah to the max. The shot will dictate what style is needed.
If you want to be an artist that's perfectly fine just don't expect everybody to want to be one also!
And understand NO matter what you do NOT EVERYBODY will like your work!!!

That is not entirely correct I am afraid. A lot of pros in this genre (photojournalism) have their more or less distinct style. When you look closely at how Reuters, AP and Getty photogs cover events, you will see the differences in how they use background, how they frame things, how they use foreground, close ups, how they catch emotional aspects, what exactly they concentrate on, etc etc.

More to it, these days many photojournalists working for top agencies incorporate street photography aesthetics and tricks into their images where it is possible. I looked through literally hundreds and hundreds of images from Greece recently, mainly Aphens, it was about the people in the times of financial crisis in Greece, and I was amazed how often agency reporters used street photography technique of juxtaposition and some other formalistic approaches developed by street photogs, that were quite alien to photojournalism some time ago.

One example that I would have posted here if not the rights issue was one recent Reuters photo of Obama at the memorial in Nairobi which made my jaw drop. The photog, instead of just reporting the event, clearly went for geometry of the monument as leading lines and juxtaposed a small distant Obama against a big bodyguard on the forefront and the whole aesthetics of the image had "street photography" written all over it. A great unusual, even controversial photo of the President. No wonder it was chosen over dozens of others.

There are many instances when photoreporters simply have no time and choice and do things mechanically, then it all looks quite similar. But as soon as they have some time and freedom, you immediately see different approaches. I would even go as far as saying that Getty and Reuters have slightly different styles . In so many cases I was able to guess - this is a Getty shot. Or, it is probably Reuters. But that is also down to their editors who select the images.

As for HDR or leaning to yellow - these things have nothing to do with style, these are technicalities.