Elements of Style

A photographer’s style is a kind of visual signature that is imprinted upon the photographer’s work.  Developing a style is one of the most often discussed topics of photography.  It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat without whacking some photographer who’s concerned about their style. 

People are concerned whether or not they have a style.  If they have one, what is it?  If not, will one ever develop?  How do I copy the Dan Winters look or the Dave Hill look?  Is my style cool or does it suck?  The list of concerns goes far beyond these.  Personally I think I'm probably known as a soft light guy.  I mean, I love my Photek softlighters (and I've been using them ever since I tried to copy the Annie Leibovitz style).  But recently I've faced a couple of situations where using big soft lights just wasn't going to work.  Instead of forcing my style onto the situations, I adapted my style to fit them.

In the first situation, my friend Heather had just bought a Porsche Boxter S and wanted to create some sassy photos that would feature the car.  The location was my hometown, which is located in the middle of the Central Valley of California.  The weather was in the high 90's and due to logistics, we had to shoot in the mid-afternoon (the hottest part of the day).  I was packing big lights as I knew I'd have to contend with the super bright sun. From experience I decided to use the 60" softlighter without the front diffuser -- I wanted a big, bright, specular light to contend with and balance (or slightly overpower) the sun.  Problem is one little gust and my 60" umbrella blew right off my light.  For some reason, the umbrella holder wouldn't lock down the umbrella shaft.  At this point I immediately decided that basic hard light was the way to go.  I put on a 7" reflector and called it good -- no wasting time messing around with gear.

On the camera camera I had a ringflash to help balance all the hard shadows that were bound to show up with two hard lights (the sun camera left and the bare strobe camera right).  The following shots are also from the same shoot.

In the second situation I was doing a test shoot with my friends Ray Ketcham and Tim Engle. We were shooting on location in the industrial part of the city.  We had two models and a somewhat interesting background of an RV and some discarded tires and other detritus along with some trees and bushes.

When I first set up I didn't have a clear vision of what I wanted to execute so I went with my fallback -- 42" softlighter on boom overhead.  I shot a few frames and decided it just wasn't working -- so off with the softlighter and on with the reflector.   The ambient was overcast clouds making way for the sun.   I decided I would use the bare strobe to highlight my subjects and make them pop a little from the ambient.  The following are two of the model shots from the test:

A funny story from the shoot: it turns out the RV was inhabited.  The guy who lived there was Jack and he had a deal with the state. He'd keep an eye on the nearby facility which had been subject to quite a bit of vandalism and break-ins in exchange for setting up home on part of the land.  We were a bit concerned about Jack at first since on-lookers can be a nuisance especially if they can throw you out of wherever you're shooting.  Tim had a great idea to put him in some of the shots with the models and we were all best friends right after.  Jack was a super nice guy and a gracious host.  I decided to make his portrait in a little area that I had been eyeing for awhile as a potential background (for some reason the area just spoke to me).

I shot Jack with with a 42" softlighter (for fill) and a bare strobe with 7" reflector (and 20° grid) as key.  The fill was camera left centered at head level. It was there to lift the shadows and also light the background. The key was camera right a little below eye level to to get under Jack's hat.  This combination of soft and hard light really brings out the texture and creates a 3D look without super hard shadows.  

Here's Jack:

And here's Ray in the same setup:

I don't think any of the above images would be considered my normal style.  But in reality they were informed by my aesthetic and I'm sure my fingerprint is in there somewhere even though they look different than images I've created in the past.

The bottom line is that it's crucial to be adaptable to whatever situation you find yourself photographing.  I'm fortunate that I was able to figure out how to make these situations work by abandoning preconceptions and rethinking my approach.  And now my style has been slightly expanded because of it.