I posted this over at Photocrati. Booray Perry has a thought-provoking short post on developing style as a photographer. Check it out.
When I hear or read folks talk about style most often they mean a consistency in vision (and thus expression of that vision) that emerges with practice, craft, and photographic imagination. Style as revealed in what we *do* to an image (or how we process it) is a different take.
But, If style is an expression of vision (vision being perhaps a combination of aesthetic insight with photographic imagination) and such style being emergent and ending in a certain consistency, then post-processing work hopefully is a way to flesh out, to give presence to, that vision and style.
I think of post-processing as only part of that equation though, not the whole. There is something in the work, the moment, our connection to it and the way we see, that inspires us to draw it out to a particular degree when processing. But the other stuff has to be there.
I often notice particular tendencies in my photography, and I know that I like to shoot certain subjects in a particular way. In other words, I have a vision for certain themes and subjects, and they inform how I might see and read moments. But that is partial, and I would not yet call it a style. I also resist stylization, so as to prevent any boxing-in that it might lead to. Frequently, I’m hyper aware of how particular influences might be shaping my photography too much.
In that sense I often think of style as walking a tightrope — sometimes we can walk it quite well, but it requires a careful balance of intricate elements, a subtlety of handling, and a mindful disposition.
