What is your photographic style and does it matter?

Do you have a style?

Have you even thought about it?

Whether we know it or not, we all have a photographic style, and, the chances are that the style you have today is not the same as it was when you started. So, does it really matter? 

If you want to develop a particular style, there's a lot of inspiration out there. One of the popular trends at the moment is to shoot photographs that mimic the early, low-resolution digital cameras. Or you might be inspired by Ansel Adams landscapes. So which styles define the decades of the last century?

That's what we'll explore in this podcast.

It's time for another podcast...

I will be running a 1-hour mini-workshop, an Introduction to Wildlife Photography, on the 26th March (recording available if you can't make the live event), and a short, 6-week course to help you with composition, "Seeing Differently", starting on the 13th April.

Click here to learn more.

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Transcript

>> Graham: 0:08

Foreign is not just in what they shoot, but in how they see the world. It's the unique fingerprint of their vision. Now that's an anonymous quote about, photography style. And in this podcast I want to talk about styles, particularly photography styles, and how they relate both to different decade. Because you can look at certain photographs and there will be things about them that will point to a particular decade and point to a particular time when they were shot. But also as individuals, as photographers, we each have our own style. We might not be conscious of it, we might be becoming more conscious of it as we take more photographs. But I think that's one of the really positive things about photography, that our style will change, whether it's conscious or subconsciously that it will change, but it will change over time because we learn different things, we're inspired by different people, we get new ideas and we have different experiences. So that's really the purpose of this podcast. I'm going to talk through a few things relating to style that I hope you find interesting and maybe will inspire you a little bit in developing your own photography. But before I do that, the usual reminder, just please like, and subscribe. That'd be fantastic. And it just helps me to continue to do these podcasts if you find them useful. And you're also very welcome to either, ah, subscribe to the podcast or to jump onto the website and buy me a coffee. That would be lovely. Okay, so I'm going to start by just talking through chronologically, perhaps things that define individual decades. So I'm going back to the beginning of the 20th century and I'll just kind of touch on, really highlight some what was going on there. Because a style, in my opinion is a combination of two things. It's what's going on socially and it's also restricted perhaps by what's available in terms of technology. So if we look at the 1900s, up to about 19, the 1910s really, we're looking at the birth of modern photography. So obviously people were taking photographs for several decades before that. But you're looking at glass plates, you're looking at very bulky gear, usually pretty long exposure times, that kind of thing. So. And for a lot of people at that time, photography was something of, a specialist activity. It's kind of like, I know I was talking to some friends about cars yesterday, having a beer, as we do on a Friday night, and we were talking about these diagnostic machines that you now plug into a modern car engine. And you can find out all sorts of things about what's going on with the engine. And that stuff is pretty powerful, but also it's quite specialized. Although on the market these days, there are more and more things that are coming into the sort of budget that perhaps the, the car enthusiast would be able to afford to do that kind of diagnostic and perhaps reprogramming on their engine. So if we sort of take that parallel and put it back to photography, I would say that the early days of photography, you're probably looking at the really expensive, more specialized gear. And it was really the hobby of, people who had the money to indulge in it. And what I'm really interested in is people who do it for a hobby, kind of ordinary people. So again, not people who have a photographic studio and do it as a business, but, if you just shoot photography because you love doing it. So that would take us to the 1900s, 1910s. What are we looking at? Probably pictorialism would define the style. Characteristically, you're probably looking at things like soft focus, maybe, M. Images that are more influenced by paintings at the time than other photographs. you might be looking at romantic, you might be looking at more atmospheric scenes. But there are fewer photographers around. Alfred Stieglitz is one who was working at that time and probably aiming to establish photography more as a fine art. So the kind of gear that they would be using at that stage would still be these very large format cameras, probably using a glass negative. And Moving to the 1920s and 30s, we go into people like Ansel Adams, who is probably better known. And I think most of us would recognize an Ansel Adams landscape. So black and white landscapes. And here things are developing. We're starting to get, There's a more modern, more modernistic flavor to the photographs and also a more documentary aspect to them. So you're starting to look at, technology which is delivering smaller, relatively smaller, more portable cameras. So obviously once you start doing that, you can start. It's much, much easier to get out to shoot landscapes and things like that. And also the number of people who can afford to buy a camera is getting much larger as well. So in the 1920s, if you think about it, the characteristics we're looking at, abstraction, maybe more industrial forms, experimental angles. So that whole creativity aspect is starting to grow. And that sits alongside the sort of Bauhaus influence. if you look at what's going on in architecture, of course the name now has gone completely out of my head as it was. But there you go, that's the joys of doing a podcast live. But that, that style, that kind of 1920s, 1930s style, is very distinctive. And if you look at even the design of locomotives and things like that, you get these amazing streamlined M locomotives. So there was a very strong art movement going on. Okay. Once you move into the 40s, we're also looking into the decade that's dominated by the Second World War for most cultures, in one form or another. So what you're seeing there, first of all, you've got the development of 35 millimeter cameras. They're very portable now. They, they can be taken, to the battlefield, to where the action's happening. And you've also got a development in flash photography. So we're seeing, gear that is recognizable to us today as being, the kind of cameras that we would use. Obviously, most of us are using digital these days, but if you take a step back from digital, the actual look of the cameras is very similar to what we have today. And certainly if, you think back to your parents or grandparents, definitely those cameras would, would be recognizable. So we're looking at photojournalism, war photography. it is much more. A lot of it is very gritty. It's very much documentation. And I mean, there's the Robert Capa, ah, photograph taken during the Spanish Civil War, that was in the late 30s. But even so, that kind of image has become very representative. And obviously there are many, many images from the Second World War. And, and if you think of some of the really horrendous events that were happening, so the, the Holocaust, the genocides that were going on, those were documented in a, in a way photographically that was never really possible before. So that style would reflect that decade. And then as we move into 1950s, you're kind of swinging the other way because you've got this almost a reaction to having gone through the events of the 1940s. There's this sort of hard swing to the other extreme, where you're looking at glamour, you're looking at how people live. There's this growth of, the suburban landscape and culture. I mean, that had already been happening certainly in the uk, which I'm more familiar with with, really the advent of around London, the Underground, but the development of transport, trains, that sort of thing. So you started to get the suburbs. People could work in a city, but not necessarily have to live in a city because it was practical to, commute every day. So the 50s, you're definitely looking at, Really the. It's probably the golden age of magazine photography. If you think of glossy magazines. so it's stylized portraits, it's stylized lifestyle, it's fashion, those kind of things. So the sort of magazines that would come forward be Life, which was again very active in the 19, 40s, but then you've got magazines like Vogue. And if you think of those kind of magazines, 1950s is definitely, where that kind of photography, really came to the fore. And there's a more optimistic, I could be a more materialistic, aspect to that photography, but it definitely defines the style of the 1950s. If you go into the 60s, you've got the kind of counterculture movement developing. So musically you've got the Beatles, you've got the Rolling Stones, all that sort of stuff. Obviously 50s, you've got Elvis Presley, you've got the whole rock and roll thing. So culturally there's huge shift, shift. And you're moving away from the more traditional kind, of culture where it's very much about family, it's about hierarchy. In the 60s you definitely got the counterculture movement and that's reflected in the photography. So there is much, greater use of color, candid street photography. Youth culture is a big aspect of it. And color photography in the 1960s was definitely becoming much more available to. To. To everybody. So, if you've got family portraits from that time, you'll probably. You would probably see a transition from black and white that would have been more likely, certainly the case in the 30s and 40s, possibly into the 50s. But definitely once you start moving into 60s, you're likely to have a lot more color photographs. And then with the 70s, you've got again, kind of swing back more to sort of more gritty photographs, more introspective photographs. there was a lot of social growth and discontent at the time. I mean, if you think to the U.S. you've got the emancipation of black people basically was going on in. Through the 60s and 70s. The. You got Vietnam going on, you've got all of the protests that was going on with younger people, particularly against what the establishment was doing. And whether you're listening to this, I'm sure in your own history there are examples. So photographically there's again a real connection with realism, telling stories. it's in some ways photojournalism, you could argue, is much, much stronger. In the 60s and 70s you're looking at color photographs. so there's a lot of change and, and what you're seeing in the 70s is definitely a growth of what was beginning in the 60s. So that whole counterculture movement now once we get to the 80s, really, that's. If you were around in the 80s then, yuppies and that kind of thing. but it was all about money, it was about success, it was about excess, it was about definitely very strong on materialism, glamorous. So the sort of glam rock stuff that was going on from the late 70s and then the 80s developed their own style, musically. So you've got this kind of very strong glamour look to what was going on, this sort of larger than life aspect to what was going on socially. So a lot of use of color lighting, a lot of heavily stylized images in fashion and advertising. So Annie Leibovitz is somebody who stands out in terms of photographers of the time with celebrity portraits. Helmut Newton M, very, very distinctive with his fashion shots, if you want to look him up and see what he was doing. So in terms of the mood of the photographs, you're looking very much at the reflection of materialism and very much opulent. So the 80s was very much that kind of very much glamour I think would sum up the 80s. But definitely if you were around in that time and I think Vogue and Madonna and those kind of things too, in the 1990s you're looking again at swinging back again to, towards minimalism, grunge, that kind of thing. So we're looking more at more unfiltered, more raw, perhaps understated, images as a style. So photojournalism is again big, more gritty photojournalism, no use of natural light, minimalistic, aesthetic in terms of fashion, what are you seeing in trends? So street photography and subcultures definitely coming to the fore much more in the 90s. And of course the 90s is where digital photography began to emerge. And there's definitely a retro movement right now to use those very early digital cameras or at least replicate the style. So if you think about you've got very low resolution photographs and they have their own look and you can think about the looks of different photographs. 1970s, I always think about more kind of washed out color photographs because the, the color technology, the films, the print technology wasn't as good as we have now. So again with the 1990s, you've got those very early digital photographs moving into this century, into the 2000s obviously the key change there technology wise is the rapid growth of DSLRs and also things like Photoshop. So again, the whole post processing, capabilities that you had available were very different. So when you were using film, you could do your own developing, you could mask aspects of the photograph, to bring out different aspects of it. But there was a huge amount of skill there and I would say that probably the majority of photographers weren't really doing that. once you get to digital photography though, with things like Photoshop, post processing becomes much, much easier to do. And it's almost now just the standard part of taking a photograph. During the days of film, you would do all your composition, you would do your cropping, you would do all of that through the viewfinder. and ideally once you hit the shutter button, that was it, that was the photograph. It's almost a reverse now, with digital photography, or at least I would argue that you take the photograph, but with the wide variety of post processing tools and the ease of use and they are really easy to use compared to what ran before. That ease of use makes that post processing almost the second part of taking a photograph. And those two parts go together before you get the final image. So that was definitely happening in the 2000s. and you'll start to see the change in the definition of images. And of course editing allows you to experiment a lot more as well. So the 2000s definitely opened the door to post processing and to the exploration of photography, but through the digital technology. So it's a different approach to what we have today. And then moving into the 2000 and tens and, and into the, the current decade, you've got, I would say, a much stronger emphasis on social media because looking back to 2010 and I can never quite remember when things came out, but obviously you've got the adoption of Facebook, you've got Instagram, you've got well, tick tock on the movies these days, you've got Pinterest. So in terms of the platforms and how we communicate with one another, that has been a big revolution in the last couple of decades, over the last couple of decades in how we communicate. And obviously that's had a big impact on how we share information. And then the other aspect of that has been the huge advancements in the capabilities of smartphones. So going back to early, portable phones, so the old Nokia, things like that, you might have had a very basic camera, but the ability to share photographs is very limited. Whereas now sharing photographs is just something we do without really even thinking about it or sharing videos. And smartphones have definitely grown a huge amount and I would argue that they've pretty much killed the compact, camera market. so these days we would use DSLRs, perhaps. There are, bridge cameras which have the lenses built in. But in terms of the compact cameras that we used to use, I would argue that really mobile phones, smartphones, have killed that market. Because you're walking around, most of us carry our, smartphones with us because we have so much stuff on them these days. They're not just for, in fact, probably making phone calls. It's one of the things you use it for the least. But you're sending messages, whether it's an sms, if you're even using those these days, it's more the case that you'd be using a, WhatsApp, something like that, to message. You can share images, documents, anything you want to do. You've probably got bank information on your phone, apt to get you from A to B, whatever it might be. You know, there's so much stuff now that we can do on the phone and that also has a huge impact on our photography and how we approach photography. So in some ways we probably have swung back to taking photographs and then not doing anything with them, just popping them straight onto social media, because that's a very easy way of just sharing what we're doing with people, and kind of promoting our own brand if you want to use it that way. So obviously brand is really big if you're looking at photography from a business perspective, but just our individual brand. As people we will tend to share certain things. So it might be what we're doing. I mean, a lot of people are really interested in food and will do food photos, but also there are social causes. So going back to what's happening socially, certainly, as I record this, in the last few years in Europe, in the us, many, other countries, there's been a shift towards the right. So it's almost like what we were seeing, what people alive at the time and seen the 1930s with the growth of fascism and that kind of thing happening and how that was perhaps documented, but to a very limited degree because we didn't have the technology and the communications platforms to really follow it. It would have been newspapers, radio broadcasts would have been the main things. Television was really, in its absolute infancy at the time. Whereas today, if you look at how social media is manipulated and images, all that kind of thing, you know, it's a very different time, but in many ways there's a parallel to what was going on in the 30s. So again, what we photograph, what we choose to share will reflect, reflect our views, our beliefs and it's a social commentary that we're all making. So I sort of skipped through the decades a little bit and to be honest, I probably talked about that longer than I'd intended. So how do we apply that back to our style? You know, what is our personal style? So one of the really good things I think about photography is that we each individually can grow, we can create different things, we can innovate in our own, our own way, and we can choose to take advantage of the latest technology, whether that's in the camera and what the camera will deliver. So a lot of the technology in cameras is really handy, particularly speaking as a wildlife photographer, but also in the post processing side, what we can do there. And obviously we've got AI coming along, which, and coming along, it's arrived. And I would say really even in the last year or so what AI is capable of doing has really changed a lot. And I would say we've moved out of the infancy of AI and we're more in the kind of adolescence of it, because the capability of AI, we see a lot of AI generated images around and it's becoming harder to tell which images are AI generated and which ones aren't. it's still possible to tell the difference. I'm not saying that, but certainly the ways of identifying have changed a lot. So how do we use AI in our photography? And then of course you get back to ethical issues. And the ethical issues have been there for a while when you go back to things like Photoshop and I've had this conversation a number of times. I've also put out podcasts on it, covered it in training. So, you know, what are, ah, the ethics? Well, again, I would say that the ethics come back down to what is your intent when you use this technology? Is your intent to convey as far as you can what you saw and to perhaps a more limited extent what the emotional impact of seeing whatever it is you photographed, what that was on you, or is your intent to deceive, essentially? Is your intent to lie, manipulate, maybe? I mean we see a lot about the interference in elections these days, so maybe that's the intent. So, you know, what do we do as as photographers? Well, my belief is that your photography will reflect your personality if you are pretty straightforward as a person, if you are an honest person, if you want to genuinely convey what you see going on, then there's not really an ethical dilemma. I would suggest, however, if you are, basically dishonest, you want to manipulate people, all of that kind of thing, you're probably not even asking the question. So that. That to me is the other side of it. So the whole ethics issue is a really important one. I think in current times it's actually becoming more and more important because the technology available to deceive or that can be used to deceive has become much stronger. So when it comes to your style probably got off track a little bit there. but you can use technology, you can go back to the styles that were used in earlier decades. And perhaps you may find some of those resonate with what's going on for you at the moment. And, that style perhaps is a more powerful way of conveying what the meaning that you want your images to have. constraints, obviously, is one of the things I've been talking about. So that will develop a style. So one of the things on projects, is to, just use one lens to do your photography. Just using the prime lens, for example. So by introducing constraints to your photography, you can also develop a particular style or an aspect of your photography. maybe produce a photo book with a particular style. And it's all based on using a single prime lens. And you've shot maybe urban, if urban, is your thing, or whatever you normally do. storytelling is a big thing. So there is a lot of cultural change right now. There are a lot of changes going on. We live in very uncertain times right now. So storytelling, I think, is even more important than it was maybe 10, 20 years ago. Because we are in, quite clearly very uncertain times. So being able to tell that story, for your children, children's children, to perhaps have some clearer understanding of what it was like to experience these kind of times is, I think, very important. Looking purely at style, you've got the aesthetics you can use as inspiration. So you could be maybe, looking for something a bit more gritty. Something like the 1970s where there was that kind of gritty aesthetic. Aesthetic, again, a time where there was a lot of change going on. or you might be inspired by the 80s with that almost that the culture of excess. bright colors, everything's over the top. That could be a style you go for. I think the key thing, and perhaps to sum up, is to think about vision. So arguably, and I would say this is True photography is definitely as much about vision as it is about tools. And I would actually say it's probably more than that, because what are the tools there for? And by tools I mean the camera that you're using, any software you might be using, whatever else contributes to the image that you finally, produce. Photography, to me, in the way I teach photography, I teach it in four stages. And the very first one is the vision. It's, you know, what are you trying to convey? What is the outcome that you're looking for? Because if you know that, then the second stage is the acquisition of the image. That's what you shoot on the camera. The third stage is what you do in post processing. So that's Photoshop or whatever you're using. those all come together. So really you start with the vision and then shooting the image on the camera, and whatever you do with it in post processing, they are both there to support the vision and to produce a final result which, conveys that vision. It respects the vision. The fourth stage is the bit where you let go of it and this is where it becomes up because this is where somebody else looks at it and they will apply meaning to that image based on their life experience. So they're looking through the lens of their own life experience. You obviously have created it and your, your, your vision, your lens is, is driven by your own life experience and what it is that you hope to convey. But what's received by the viewer is obviously done through the filter of their life experience and that can be very different. So I guess to conclude, I hope that hasn't totally baffled you. but I think coming back to why do we do photography? Why do we take a photograph? For me, it's to convey something. If I'm photographing wildlife, I want to give people the view of an animal that they can relate to and in relating to that animal. Because what drives my photography is primarily conservation, because the wildlife that I photograph, most of it is endangered to one extent or another. Some of it is critically endangered, some of it less so. But the, the way things are going, the way we behave as a, as a species, we're likely to drive pretty much everything, towards extinction. And the reality is that many of the animals that we take for granted now, elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, there is still a very significant chance that in a few decades time they will be extinct. So I guess to quote David Attenborough, if you aren't photographing with a view to get people to care about these animals, and to do something, help people who are trying to, save them. Whether it's to support a project or to lobby your government or whoever it might be. If you don't care about an animal, you're not going to do anything to support it. And the way to care about it is to feel some sort of connection with it. And people go on safari, a lot of people, when they experience animals in the wild, will feel a connection to them. But there are a lot more people who, maybe you simply can't afford to go or won't have that experience. And this, to me is where photography comes in. And so the images I try to shoot are images where people can feel a connection to that image now. So that's my vision, I suppose, you know, the broad vision. And then there'll be a more specific vision for each shot. Whatever you do, I hope that that resonates with you in the. Whatever drives your photography. And it may just be, well, just. It could be family history, for example. Your family might be, hopefully is really important to you. And recording different things that happen as your family grows, it's great to document that so that you can look back on it. And then people that come in the future, when they look at those photographs, the names and dates mean something more than just names and dates and family tree. Or you may have another passion. It might be political, it might be something else. But whatever your passion is, if you understand the tools that you're using, which is the purpose of photography training that I offer, you can also use a style that may help you to communicate to your viewer more effectively. One of the places we can go to get inspiration with our style is the past and to just look at the kind of styles that defined different decades and what was going on in those decades. So that is it for this podcast. As I say, I hope that has been useful. I thought in, this podcast to try a slightly different take on, what I normally talk about in the podcast. so I hope it's been useful. And, please like, comment, please do comment if you've got suggestions as well or any feedback is really useful. If this kind of podcast is the sort of thing you like, the. That's great. If you hate it, let me know. It's all good. So that is it. And, I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Now, I just want to say thank you for tuning in and joining me in the, Wildlife and Adventure, photography podcast. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please give me a like a subscribe, maybe tell your friends, and by all means leave a comment. And if there is a subject you would like me to cover in the future, please let me know. And I'll, be very happy to do my best. So thanks again for joining, me. And I look forward to seeing you again. Next podcast. Bye for now.