One year ago, we changed the tagline of our website to say “Photography Life: AI-Free Since 2008.” Even though it was largely a statement against generating our articles and photos artificially, it was also a statement for something I consider essential in photography, perhaps today more than ever: personal style and artistic expression.
Photographers all see the world differently. We’re drawn to different genres, subjects, light, composition, post-processing, print styles, and so on. Every creative decision is one that some photographers will make differently. And as a result, every photo that you view has, essentially, been filtered through the photographer’s brain following the unique path of their creative decisions. Looking at the photo, you will learn a little bit about the photographer and how they perceive reality. The more of their work you experience, the more you learn.
I call this personal style. It is one of the most important parts of photography.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve written about personal style in photography, and I encourage you to read my three-part essay on the subject if you missed when I first published it in 2017 or expanded upon it in 2020. But with the benefit of a few more years of photography since then, I think I have one more thing to add to the discussion today. It’s the idea of visual echoes.
The best way to explain visual echoes is to show some examples.
8 years and 3400 miles (5500 km) apart
1 year and 6200 miles (10,000 km) apart
6 months and 4000 miles (6400 km) apart
3 weeks and 3500 miles (5600 km) apart
An Explanation
Near the end of my earlier essay on personal style, I discussed how it can be detrimental to over-analyze your style of photography or aim for a consistent personal style. To quote from that article briefly: “The result will be a static portfolio – one that stays the same even as you change.”
I still believe that to be true. But today I want to mention one corollary, and it has to do with the photos I shared above.
Simply put, there are threads that go through your photography across time and distance. They never show up in exactly the same way. But they’re there, visual echoes of your artistic vision. They say a lot about who you are as a photographer.
I certainly don’t think that it’s good to box yourself into one personal style and keep making, essentially, caricatures of your previous work as you get older. Yet I do think that some of the visual relationships that interest you as a photographer will be stubbornly persistent, even when you’re not trying to seek them out. And, once you realize that you like certain types of photos or compositions, it’s smart to use that knowledge to decide where to go and what to do on your next photographic outings.
From the visual echoes in the photos above, you can tell that I like a few things as a photographer. Dark, semi-abstract compositions. Fog, mist, and steam – all dynamic scenes. And certainly landscapes more than anything else. Of course, it would be a mistake if I used that knowledge to close myself off from other subjects. One day, maybe I’ll realize that brighter forest scenes or classic ultra-wide landscapes are what I love the most… or even a different genre altogether like street photography.
I’m sure that you can look through your own photos and find visual echoes that are just as clear as these. Inevitably, you will change over the years, so continue to keep an open mind. But as you do, look for similar themes that continue to appear throughout your work. If you can learn something from them – especially about which places or subjects to photograph next – you will save some time and end up cultivating your personal style a little more carefully. There’s a limit on how much time we get in this world, and analyzing the visual echoes in your photography can help you figure out where to spend it.