I think my photography can be confined to three main categories - Portraits, Landscapes, and Abstracts.
When I started taking pictures I was mostly interested in landscape photography- finding certain surroundings and portraying them in a way that interests the viewer and myself. When choosing locations for landscape photography I try to visualize what type of scene I want to present. What type of scene is on my mind is usually determined by things I have seen or heard about lately, from something cool I saw in a music video on Youtube to a webpage on urban exploration in Detroit... inspiration comes from all over.
I have had people joke with me that since a lot of my pictures are darker or gloomier that it represents my mindset (i.e. that I am sad or depressed) but I don't think that is the case. I have just always been more interested in darker, gloomier things. One of my early influences was the polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński whose work is some of the darkest/scariest I have seen. (You can check out some of his work here: http://www.beksinski.pl/ ) One thing I always liked about his work was the often subdued color palette- which is probably why I tend to stay away from oversaturated colors and go for more subdued ones.
After I had been focusing on landscapes for about 6 months I started to dabble in portraits. I do most of my research by reading articles and discussions on the internet so I knew that if I wanted to be serious about my work, I needed to get some off camera lighting, i.e. flashes. I've been using flashes in my portraits for almost a year and a half now, and while I am still far from "awesome" at it, I am happy with my progression so far. Keep in mind that in the year and a half I have done around 25 photoshoots with flashes, so it's not a once-a-week type of deal. I'm sure I'd be a lot better if I dedicated more of my time to it.. which I am trying to do now.
So anyway, I'd say within about two months of playing around with the flashes I had a pretty decent idea of the basics of how to light scenes, both through experimentation and looking at other photographer's work and deciphering how they lit their scenes. For something that I do on the side, I don't think that is a terrible long period to understand the basics. That is part of the reason why I am slightly irked when I see portrait/wedding photographers selling their services and only using the pop-up flash on their cameras. Two months of casual experimentation (this sounds kinky, doesn't it?) and about a $450 investment (for the flash + remote radio triggers) and the difference in your portraits can be night and day (literally, haha. Get it? It's a joke about light.) It's ignorant that these photographers can get away with it, but the average person just doesn't know any better... people don't realize that it's not that hard to get a photograph taken of them that looks really good.. it's just hard to find a photographer that is willing to put some effort into their work! One of the hardest things for photographers to find is good criticism. You HAVE to put your work out there to be critiqued- you need to hear what you are doing wrong. If I only heard people tell me my work was good, I would push myself to get better. It can be hard to hear someone tell you your photo sucks, but once you have heard it enough times, you stop making bad photos and the criticisms change to much smaller details regarding fine-tuning the images.
Now this opinion of mine is mostly based on America's small-town situation where there are maybe only 1-2 professional photographers in an area. When an entire population has such a small selection of photographers to go to, they get used to the caliber of those artists' work and accept it as the norm. That's how Olan Mills stay(s(ed?)) in business. They had horrrrrrrrible photos! Of course you have to cut them some slack as they operated primarily during the 80s and early 90s, a time when fashion wasn't its classiest. If I took pictures of some of the people that walked into Olan Mills I'm pretty sure I'd still roll my eyes at them (the photos not the people, bless their hearts).
I think another problem with generic studio portrait photographers is that studio shots are boring... I like lively scenes that work to make a photo interesting. When you are taking something like a family portrait, the subject and the main focus of the photo is of course the family. You don't want a setting that is going to overpower the family and cause the viewer 's eye to stray away from the subject for very long. On the other hand, I don't think people like having generic portraits that look like every single other portrait taken in that studio.
"No no no, my portrait is different because our family all wore baseball t-shirts and had a background of the main colors of our favorite baseball team!" I guess you can call that different if you want, but all that photo really says about your family is that you guys like a baseball team. If that's all you want to say then that's fine with me, but it's not really something I'm interested in offering in my photography. If you want a baseball themed family portrait, I'm going to drag you to a baseball field somewhere, give you some gloves/balls/bats and take some lively photos that are fun and non-conventional. Maybe I'd have you sit in a dugout... I don't care, I will just do anything to get you out of a studio and into a real setting that is much more full of life.
My favorite portraits are ones that portray a scene, tell a story, give the viewer a reason to stop and think- even if only for a second- to decipher everything that is going on. I don't need deep meaning behind my portraits, that just doesn't suite my taste in photography. I have always favored stunning photography to meaningful photography. I like to look at a photo and say "Wow!" I appreciate ordinary-looking photos that you have to look at and slowly draw your own opinions from, but it's not my preferred method. This might actually slightly reflect my personality, but that isn't really a topic I want to get into, haha.
Finally this leads me to the abstract segment of my photography. Once again my work is not really thought driven, it is more focused on patterns and groupings, of bold lines and interesting colors. I am more of a "see the big picture" kind of person so abstract photos are definitely rare from me. Once in a while I will get in the mood for something abstract, but more often than not it is something I resort to when a landscape location has proven disappointing and I don't want to go home empty handed.
I might expand upon a few of these points later, but after reading this you should have at least a basic understand of how I think when it comes to my photography work.
Thanks for reading!
