Vision and Style

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! Hohenfels is coming to life, mixed weather bringing the lure of photo opportunities and some nice lighting our way!

Today we’re going to talk about the concept of style. No, not the dated, faded, ‘70s look, but your own photographic style.

We’ll be brief, maybe too brief, with this right now. First, we need to know what a photographic style is. In the context, we’re using it, it’s basically the way you express your self. Your photographic style should represent you and how you see things.

When you’re starting out, you don’t have much of your own style. You’re trying to learn about photography and taking photos. The first thing to do is learn about exposure. Next up comes learning your camera and gear inside out.

When you know your gear, thoroughly, and how to use it, it becomes a tool for your expression. Another thing you need to learn is about yourself. How do you see things, how do you want others to see them, and what is your vision? A great way to do this is to examine a lot of photos and other art. See what makes you feel good about it, and what turns you off. Once you know that, you can begin to use your knowledge of photography and your gear to show the world what you want it to see.

That last bit requires some honesty on your part. It’s basically opening yourself up. The cool thing about it is that you can also hide or minimize the reality in your images. If you want the world to see something a certain way, you also have to remove or hide from your image elements that detract from your intent.

This week’s exercise is to choose 1 theme or subject, and only make images revolving around that theme or subject. You have to be honest with yourself here, and choose something that appeals to you. Choosing only the 1 theme will open your eyes to a new way of expressing yourself. For an even more challenging exercise, combine this exercise with our last ones.

By now, you should be getting a feeling for your vision and for composing an image. Remember, composition is more than placement, lighting, color, time, weight, DOF, etc, are all elements of composition, but the most important element is your vision.

Enjoy the week and keep shooting. I hope everyone gets their dream shot this week!

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