A bit more about personal style …

Over at Shawn Records blog (40 Watts), Shawn has an interesting take on the concept of personal style in photography

My tastes lean toward those projects that, like a good novel or film, create layers and connections that warrant repeated viewings and take me beyond my initial expectations.-Shawn

It is an interesting point of view that relates two aspects of photography that are very important: cohesiveness and storytelling. Relationships between images can be based on pure aesthetic, perhaps on a link in the storytelling, or more interestingly, juxtapositions of pictures that look unrelated in style or topic but connect to communicate a broader idea.

My point at the post I wrote about personal style, is that personal style is not about being different, not about having a “single” style of photography but about the photographer to create images that speak from his heart and vision.

Don’t shoot until you feel it in your gut. -Lisette Model

Sometimes the aesthetic of the pictures will fall within the framework of a similar style, and other times will not. But, when all the images describe the vision of the artist to convey a concept or story, these images will define his style. Clearly, from the audience perspective, perhaps it is easier to associate style with images that share a common aesthetics rather than the approach that the photographer takes for storytelling. But personal style, of course, also defines a way to tell a story with photography even if the aesthetics of the images are different.

By the way, speaking about connections between images, a particular example of the use of connections between images are diptics, an approach that I love.

©Michael LeGrand