You Don’t Always Have to Follow the Pack

From one visually inspired person to the rest of the world…You don’t always have to follow the pack.  Let me explain 🙂

Throughout this whole photography journey I’ve learned invaluable information and so many important lessons. When I first started out, I had so many questions and I was reading everything I could get my hands on, watching every Youtube video imaginable, followed all the cool photographers and valued the time I got to spend with some of them and the things I learned.
But honestly, there’s 1 thing that never sat well with me. I understood what the approach was but I never felt right actually implementing it. I actually tried over and over and over again and I just couldn’t keep at it. What was it? It was what my photographer friends would call “being consistent” or having “a style”. I couldn’t do it. I still can’t. And to some (many actually) that would mean that was doomed to fail. Fail because “no one would know what they were getting”, they wouldn’t want to book with me because they were unsure of the outcome.

Here’s what I mean by that…if you venture out into Facebook land, there’s tons of wonderful photographers. TONS. They do brilliant work that I have gawked over. What you might notice about some of their work is no matter what environment they’re in, the white balance, contrast, exposure of the image is pretty much in line with everything they’ve done. So when people book them, they know for instance that they’re getting say “warm colored, moody portraits” or “light and airy low contrast portraits”. And I get it…that’s why a lot of people book a certain photographer.

Here’s my take and I know it may ruffle some feathers…

To me, art is a form of expression. Photography is art. I don’t see every situation in the same light. Every situation and circumstance is different in its own way. If I shot everything the same exact way every time and edited every single image the same exact way for every session, I feel like for myself, you’re losing the “art”. I’d be losing the creativity and meaningfulness. And pretty much I’d be just a robot. No doubt…some sessions definitely deserve a nice warm light and lots of brown tones..like fields for example. I don’t feel like beach sessions always need that.  Consistency for me is using my skills and what I’ve learned to be able to produce images that people will cherish forever.

My advice for anyone starting in this crazy world of photography or “Art” in general is to do what makes YOU happy. You were blessed with gifts and talents and you should use them in a way that you’re ok with. We don’t have to always conform to the norm. Embrace what makes you different and run with it. We don’t have to be the same all the time.
I can say this for me…the world is extremely comfortable with consistency and predictability. I want no parts of that. So this is all about You Don’t Always Have to Follow The Pack. You can read about the best photography here