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Finding Your Style

Now we're going to get into talking about how I found my style. When it comes to the realm of wildlife photography, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is "National Geographic." They've kind of set the standard and it's a very prestigious realm to be a part of. When they, you know, document wildlife through photography or film, they're doing it through a scientific lens and definitely more of a photo journalism documentary style. I'm definitely not here to hate on them, but my personal preference is I'm not really into super technical shooting with a lot of rules, and I'm not into photojournalism realism, but you never know. 20 years from now that could change, but for right now, this is where I'm at. When it comes to my work, I can't help but think about the Realism Period of art around the 1800s. Back then, famous Realist painters were painting in a way to try and copy what they saw in real life. Capturing those realistic details was key, and getting your painting to look as...

lifelike as possible was the goal. After the Realists, the Impressionists came along and they kind of rebelled against everything the Realists were doing. We had famous painters such as Monet, and rather than trying to paint exactly what they saw, they tried to capture a scene by the way it felt. They tried to capture this fleeting impression of what they were seeing. I really relate to that. I would say my work, you know, takes aspects of Realism because I am shooting real wildlife. This is a real photo of a tiger. But I'm trying to edit it in an Impressionist way. I'm trying to use painterly brush strokes, you know, in Lightroom and Photoshop, and I'm trying to capture the way that that wildlife made me feel in the moment. With that, I always like to state that I consider myself to be an artist first and a photographer second. For the majority of my life, I was actually a painter before really having letting photography take over. I think my kind of struggle with painting was that it took way too long. I personally struggle with finding patience and having patience, and I was finding that most of the paintings I was doing could take me six months to a year. So that's kind of another reason why I transitioned into photography. I loved that I could go out, click a photo, and instantly it's there rather than waiting six months to form. So, with that being said, I definitely am not trying to edit in a real way. I'm not trying to be like "National Geographic." I'm not following a strict set of photography editing rules. I'm shooting what I'm seeing, but I'm choosing to edit it in a more creative and artistic way if that feels right for the photo. In talking about finding your own style and your own voice, I think it's important to mention that a huge way you can do that is by finding your color palette. I think it can be as simple as thinking about what are your favorite colors? What do you want to see in a photo? Do you want to go with complimentary colors, you know, for example, red and green? Or maybe analogous colors, you know, very cool, you know, blue, navy, purple, those kinds of colors. Or sometimes I love to use monochromatic where everything is the same color in one photo. You should reflect on that and kind of think about what is it that you like and incorporate that into your color palettes. For me personally, I like to choose warm and cool colors all in one photo. Although sometimes, lately, I find myself creating an all cool photo or an all warm photo. And I'm always chasing after those teal and orange colors since those are my favorite colors that I choose to incorporate into my palette. But again, it's key for you to find what you like. I also wanted to mention that if there is a color that I'm not liking in my photo, for example, I would say my biggest struggle is probably either greens or if something is magenta in a photo, I will either try to completely remove that green or change it into more of like a teal turquoise tone. Or if it's magenta, I might try to change it to more of a red. It's just finding those personal preferences for yourself. I think also a way to develop your personal color palette and style is kind of choosing how many colors you want in a photo. I think the more minimal you keep that number, the more your style will stand out. For example, if you can get your photos just down to, you know, green and white, then when you look at your work as a whole, it'll be very cohesive. I try to stick to mainly black or a dark color, white, teal, and orange. But, you know, sometimes that can be very limiting, so sometimes I will have more colors or sometimes I'll even have less than that. And that's also something to think about when choosing your color palette. I definitely need freedom, that's kind of a part of my rebellious personality. I need to be able to play with color. I need to be able to experiment. And kind of something I love and hate about myself is it means that over the years, my photos, my style, the way I edit has changed and evolved drastically. If you go way back into my earlier work, it's, you know, to me, it's pretty embarrassing. The editing is horrible, but it's okay because it's a part of my journey, it's constantly grown and evolved. So, I'm curious to see, you know, my editing a year from now could look completely different the more I keep learning and growing, and I want that for you too. When I'm editing my wildlife photos, I'm editing it in a way that I believe is celebrating the animal. And through that, I want the viewer to become intrigued about that animal. I want them to grow in curiosity about it, and maybe become interested in desiring to know its story and their desire to protect the animal as well. Similarly, when I am editing my landscape travel adventure photos, I'm editing in a way that I hope invokes emotion in the viewer, but also in myself. I've kind of always been an anxious person that struggles with anxiety, so when I'm shooting and editing, I'm trying to bring out a sense of calm and the way I can do that is by being as minimal as possible in my work. It's just, that's my personal preference. You might like more scenes with more details, more chaos, or, you know, more trees or plants. It's all a personal choice. But for me, choosing to edit in a minimal way that creates a calming photo, it kind of becomes my therapy where through this process I'm calming myself down in my own little creative world. With that, to achieve a more minimal calm look on a photo, that does mean a lot of the time that I add or remove things to my photos in Photoshop, for example, you know, if there's rocks on the ground, or a little plant that's sticking out and bothering me, or if it's on an animal, maybe it has like some dirt on its face that I want to get rid of. I'll get rid of it, or if I think this shot of a mountain would be more powerful if I added, you know, a moon or a bird, you know, then I just put a bird on it, as they say. And some people can be really bothered by that. But I think the people that are bothered by that are, again, the kind of photographers that are more into photo journalism, telling the exact truth of how a scene was. But I'm not interested in showing the scene exactly how it was. I'm interested in creating an emotion, creating a vibe, creating this little dream world that people can escape to. I definitely have no problem saying this moon in this scene was not real. I added it. That's totally fine, but I'm also not going around and claiming this is real, 'cause it's not. Well, it might be, but every case is different. So, yeah. I feel like I just wanna encourage you to experiment. Maybe you prefer to go the realism route, maybe you prefer to create your own dream world. All of it is great as long as you're feeling creative, as long as you feel like you're learning and growing. Probably one of the most important aspects to photography, in my opinion, is finding your own style. If you have your own style, that is the only way that you can stand out from the crowd. As technology is evolving with iPhones and cameras and all these things, more people are becoming interested in photography and the realm is becoming more saturated. So it's becoming harder and harder to stand out. And I truly believe that one of the key ways you can do that, standing out, is by finding your own style. One of the things I love doing is nostalgically re-editing photos. I have some photos that are my favorites that I have come back to over and over again, year after year, and just decided I wanna re-edit this with everything I've learned this year. Sometimes it can actually drive me insane because then I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, I've re-edited this photo 10 times, and it looks completely different every time. And I think that kind of shows that I feel as artists, we're never satisfied. Our work is literally never done, and we're always changing and evolving if we're pursuing learning. Something I'm noticing more and more on social media is that it's becoming saturated with copycats. Someone goes to an amazing spot or they find this unique area and then a million people go there and try to copy that exact photo. And don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of it too. I've gone to many of the classic spots that you see and created similar photos. But I think it's so important to, again, try and stand out from the crowd even if you're doing that. When you go to some of these classic spots, find your own unique angle. Find a way to somehow make your photo different, and create a new take on that location. I think when someone is just starting out in photography, it's completely natural to have someone you look up to and someone that inspires you, and you should look for that inspiration and those role models so that you have something to work towards in your own path. And maybe when you're first starting out, you know, you buy someone's presets or you're trying to figure out how they edit. And I think that can be such an important learning process. When you buy someone's presets, you see how they work and you can learn how to figure out from there how you wanna work. And there are people even today who, like, I would love to take their workshops and learn how they've mastered their craft. And again, that's why I cannot stress how important it is to still take workshops and learn from people you admire. But I think there becomes a turning point where in order to stand out from the crowd, you have to literally decide I'm no longer going to continue to try to emulate the people I admire. Now it's time to be me. Now it's time to find my voice. Now it's time for me to stand out and create my own unique way of working. It's absolutely critical if you want to find success in this saturated realm that you make the conscious decision to not emulate the people around you or the people you look up to and find your own path. Find your own voice. I also want to say that when you focus so much on replicating someone else's work or trying to figure out how someone else is editing, in doing that, you're actually blocking the creative process that's inside of yourself, and further blocking you from finding your originality. So with that, find you. I think if everyone focused more on being as original as they possibly could be and not copying others, they would find that their creativity would actually start to explode and they would find their own style and their own voice much quicker. Sometimes finding your own style and your own voice can come immediately. I think those photographers are pretty lucky. They're the original gangsters from the start. But sometimes it can take years. For me, it took many years of experimenting and learning for me to find my own style, and I'm sure it will even now continue to change. As long as you persevere in finding your own style and your own voice, you will find it eventually. And coincidentally, when you find your voice in your style, most likely people are going to respect it and then try to replicate it. They say imitation is flattery, so maybe when someone starts copying you, that's when you'll know that you're crushing it. Next, we're going to go into a live editing of my photos, and I hope that by me showing you my style, my color preferences, that it will encourage you to find yours as well.