Style

It's common to worry about developing your own style. There are even books you can read to tell you how to do this. Frankly, I think it's a joke. Anything you do deliberately to differentiate your work would be better described as an affectation. Style comes from seeing that way, of doing things in a particular way because you have to to express yourself clearly. It comes from a varied background in photography or the arts. We're tempted to think that composers like Mozart developed their musical style de novo - but it's far from the truth, He had years of musical exposure and training before he started composing and he started composing by picking up where others left off, not by suddenly coming up with a totally new style - Beethoven the same. You'd think the 20th century composers with their non melodic music must have invented it one day, but truth is there were hints in the 19th century. Truth is music was moving that direction anyway. In art, picasso may have developed a totally new style of painting - but the precursors were there and I believe he started out relatively conventionally. Lots of his sketches are very classical in appearance (no eyes between breasts there).

Perhaps someone with a better background on Picasso can comment but I doubt he woke up one morning and said to himself - I need to be different to become famous. If I remember correctly, he was a respected artist already before he painted in the cubist style.

Edward Burtynsky photographs with an 8X10 not because he wants to show he's more manly - he has a point to make and the incredible detail possible with an 8X10 was the only practical tool at the time (nowadays he could in theory stitch with a medium format back, but perhaps in China he still finds the 8X10 more reliable and practical). His huge prints are made to have impact, for you to be able to see the scale, the repitition, the sheer effect on the landscape and the environment. 8X10 glossies just wouldn't do it.


My point? Well, I think you can probably assume you aren't going to develop a style overnight. It almost certainly is going to be a leap in the direction you seem to be going anyway. You can't buy it, read it, pick it up at a garage sale and you can reasonably assume it's going to come with sweat equity and probably not even at a conscious level.

Save yourself the trouble, don't try to rent a style. It'll come, eventually, if you keep trying to express yourself rather than make pictures to sell well or please others.