Do you make these three style mistakes?

• Soaring •

• Soaring •
If you want to develop your style – see the world a different way.
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Your personal style defines your photography.

When you start out in photography your style takes time to develop. However, you can easily stifle your photographic style if you don’t develop your photographic skills. You can avoid the problem by paying attention to these three key issues.

1. Little photographic experience

You can take thousands of pictures and still have little photographic experience. It is easy to do lots of pictures about the same type of thing. After a while this becomes boring and your pictures will become mundane or clichéd. It is easy to get into a rut and find your personal style stops developing. This happens even if you are photographing something you really find interesting.

Solution: Find new techniques to take photographs of your interest. To break out of a style rut you can easily change your technique. Here are some ways to do it…

  • Try a different lens… keep using it to force yourself to take new perspectives
  • Develop particular themes – Colour, shape, size, distance, angle
  • Use online tutorials to develop a new approach
  • Do a Google search on your image interests to see how others approach the subject
  • Discuss your interests with another photographer with different interests to get a new perspective
2. Limited range of photographic techniques

Lots of photographers beginning to develop their style are limited by the range of techniques they know. To take a different perspective it helps to extend your photographic skills. Here are some examples of techniques you can use change your photographic viewpoint…
Learn to manipulate Depth of Field – try these links to start you off:
Depth of field – a powerful photographic tool
An easy lesson in beautiful bokeh
One big change – one easy step forward (depth of field)
Controlling the Depth of Field (DoF) – Three Tips
Learn about action shots and panning – check out the resources here: Action shots – how to…
Try out night photography of your subject. Here is a resource page: Night Photography
There are lot of other resources on Photokonnexion. Check out the “Articles” section in the menu on the top of each page. Also you could try the “Categories” section up there too. They both offer different perspectives for resources on this site.

3. Poor understanding of composition and light

Both composition and light have a key role to play in your photographic style and how you approach your subject. You can follow up on some easy lessons in understanding light and compositional techniques from this site too. Here are some suggestions to get you started.
Key lessons in composition are:
Rule of thirds
Lines
Perspective
Key lessons in understanding light:
Six things to know about light
Three little known facts about shadows
Light, a Little Difference Makes a Big Impact (Hard and soft light example).
There are further links on the bottom of each page to help you follow up on more ideas.

Developing your style and skill go together

If you want to develop your own style, change your style if you are in a rut or just have wider experiences in photography – then learn more. As you develop your skills and take into account wider perspectives you will broaden your experience. You will have more fun too!

By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

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