When Everyone is a Photographer, Can I be original?

Everyone with a phone or camera is out shooting. On the whole, this is a good thing. But with images flooding everyone’s brain on a daily basis, one question remains. How do you stand out?

I will now summarize several platitudes found on various memes across the social media universe:  Everyone can take a picture, but no one can take a picture like you.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And I don’t mean to strike a cynical tone. I do believe we all have our own style and see the world from a unique perspective.

But there are landmarks and monuments that attract throngs of photographers, amateur and pro alike. And if you’ve seen photographs from these places, you’d be hard pressed to see one persons style standing out from the others.

The truth is, for someone starting out on their photographic journey, you pretty much need to mimic photographers you admire. It is important to try and copy their work and figure out how they achieved their final shot, both in execution in the field and later on in the computer during post-processing.

After figuring out the secret sauce of your favorite photog, you’ll find that you will tire of copying other’s creative work and want to strike out on your own. But where do you start?

Do This to Find Your Photography Style

The answer is both simple and frustrating: you just start. Go out and take pictures. Heck, don’t go anywhere and take photos of your cat licking itself, or of your dog staring out you because you haven’t fed them. Go out in your backyard, or rooftop, or local coffee shop, and just shoot. Use different apertures, flash, no flash. Try any and all techniques.

It doesn’t matter what you shoot, as long as you just shoot. Eventually, you will venture out and meander your way toward what interests you. It could be street photography, or taking portraits of your friends and family. Perhaps you want to shoot people in action while they play sports. Or, God help you, landscape photography.

Whatever your passion, just start shooting it. Make tons of mistakes. Learn from those mistakes. Then go out and make more. The one and only way to find your own photographic style is by shooting. LOTS.

Eventually, you will discover what you like to shoot. How you like to shoot it. And, just as important, how you like to tweak your pictures in post-processing (or perhaps you’re the rare old-schooler who likes images straight out of camera?).

A word of warning. This process can take a long time. And you will find that you will fall in love with one genre of photography only to burn out and move on and find a new one. This is common and a normal part of the growth process as a photographer.

Heck, I started out shooting in 1999. I went the “normal” route of thinking I had to get studio lights, and off-camera flash, and shoot portraits and events and the like. Turns out, I didn’t like doing that kind of photography. Every time I came back to my camera over the years, I thought I just had to suck it up and do what others were doing.

Finally, finally, finally, I said to myself, “I don’t want to shoot people. I want to just be out there with my camera and shoot landscapes and nature. And, oh, by the way, I don’t want to use a tripod.”

It took me almost 20 years to come to that point. I’m not saying that’s how long it will take you to reach that stage, but just know that there is no timeline. It will come for you at the appropriate time. There is no shortcut that I know of. You just have to go through a lot of shit first.

One other thing to note. There likely won’t be an “A-ha!” moment. It’s not like one day you don’t have your own style and then the next day, POP!, you have one. No, it comes gradually, slowly, and you may not even realize it until someone says something negative about one of your photos along the lines of, “That doesn’t look like the pictures you normally take.” That’s when you’ll know.