Warm and cold. Hard and soft. Big and small.
Back on December 28th, I wrote this post about photographic style. In it, I indicated that no one could probably pick out my style in a line up of photographs. Julie, disagreed:
I dunno, there’s a few recurring visual elements that pop up in your work rather often, and this post is an excellent example as your fascination with shadows would be one i’d list! You do tend to lean towards contrast and strong compositions, whether you’re shooting in colour or bw, and you’re good at cropping a scene to tell the story – a style can be the focal length and way you frame things as much as the choice of subject or method of processing.
Julie
Thanks to her astuteness, I went back over some of my earlier work and made a discovery: Not only do I like contrast, as in tonal contrast, I like, even more – to use a big word, juxtapositional contrast. In looking back over these photos, I see a definite pattern of taking photos of soft next to hard, as in this top photo (I’ve lots of flowers next to rocks!), tiny flowers growing at the base of large trees, big sky/small people, warm/cold, lots of sun/shadow – the whole yin/yang of it.
I even went back several years, back to 2006 and had a look, looking for this particular style element and found them all over the place. Believe me, it wasn’t hard. I have no desire, of course, to change this now that I’ve noticed it because, well, I suppose that is just how I see things and that’s alright by me. 
Of course, I don’t always shoot this way, but a large amount of the time, I do. Not surprisingly, at least to me, when I awoke this morning, I looked out the window, saw frost and sunshine in the backyard, got dressed hurriedly and dashed out the back door, camera in hand. Wow! Frost and sunshine! Gotta have it! LOL – More warm and cold. That’s where today’s photo came from. Hot off the presses.
I’m glad that Julie noticed this. It’s always good to learn something about yourself – something that even you couldn’t see.
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Julie’s quite right in her appraisal of your work. This set of photos makes for a good case in point.
Cedric Canard recently posted..Taking my sweet time
Yeah, Cedric: Going back through the archives makes it seem terribly obvious … well, obvious to me AFTER she said something.
That is quite a good observation from Julie. I admire when someone can make such observations and communicate them in such a nice concise way. I struggle for such words quite often.
Mark recently posted..Winter sunrise on the lake
I might have the words, sometimes, but not the observation. She most certainly has the observation as well as the words. A nice combination, to be sure.
Way to go Julie.
In reference to your post I think some of us think it’s necessary to create a style rather than just let our photography develop. I feel that photography has helped me to see the world with a different pair of glasses. Happy shooting, my friend!
Monte Stevens recently posted..It’s Cold Down Here
Yep. And that was kind of my point. Don’t worry about it, shoot, and let it develop on its own. What is ‘in’ will ‘out’
I’m the worst at seeing these patterns in my own work. That’s why we need editors, man.
Chris Klug recently posted..More X-Pro 1
No kidding!
There is no doubt Julie is right and she does seem to have a keen sense of observation. Now that you’re aware of your own style you can take advantage of it
ken bello recently posted..Freshly Pressed: Friday Faves
Ken: I hope to forget about it. LOL – That is, to not be guided by it, or perhaps to just be aware of it.