P#21 Q5B: What Does Your Photography Style Say About You?

What Do You Shoot?

Bryan Peterson: Once you know how your lenses view the world and you know which ones to use, you want to follow up with this exercise. Say to yourself, "Okay, I'm going to do nothing but shoot a line photography style as I head out the door." Or, "I'm going to go out and photograph nothing but textures," or, "nothing but color."

When you think about color and textures, you can start breaking this down and say, "I'm only looking for rough textures. I only want rough. No, I want soft. No, I'm going to do hard. No, I'm going to sharp. No, I'm going to do dull." Those are all ways to describe texture.

Likewise, "I want to do color photography style today but only red. I only want to shoot red today so I'm looking for red, red, red," and make your focus red. "Oh no, I'm going to shoot nothing but yellow," or "blue," and on it goes.

What will happen, and I've seen this happen in the online classes with every single student, and it's a fun, fun, fun lesson that we have in one of the courses called "The Art of Seeing."

I have everyone upload their pictures and I critique them all at the end. They get sent a psychological profile of what their images say about them because there is nothing closer to a self portrait than pictures that are photographing the elements of design, as odd as that may sound. It's true.

There are four primary types of photographers. They tend to migrate towards lines, textures, patterns or colors.

By line, we go back to the gentleman in the mountains who I suggested use the foreground branches of the tree coming into the top of his frame as two lines that invite the viewer to come into the photograph.

Likewise, you could have that same person who says, "No, I'm going to use the foreground rocks." All of a sudden, we're using textured rock as a foreground interest. It's a subtle secondary thing. Yes, it's rocks, but to the artistic sense in most of us it's the textures on that rock that matter.

Some say, "No, I don't want to shoot landscapes at all. In fact, all I want to do is look down on the forest floor and see these amazing colorful patterns of weeds." Then you see over time that you're a pattern kind of person. You're the person who runs down to the local market and shoots the big boxes of apples, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash in a pattered fashion.

Or you may be a person who does nothing but shoots color. You don't care what it is as long as it's red, or yellow, or blue.

Psychologically speaking, what reveals itself is this. Historically, people who shoot line photography have a tendency to be very assertive, very outgoing, far from being an introvert, and very, very goal oriented.

People who shoot textures are the people that we all want in our corner because they're going to listen to us. These are the touchy, feely people. They are the center of the family, as we say.

Then you have the people with a pattern photography style. People who shoot patterns also have a great sense of belonging to something, not longing to belong, but they do belong. They also don't usually like to spend a lot of time alone. They're always very, very involved with social gatherings. They're also the volunteer workers of the world.

Finally, you have the color people, which are often people who are quite flamboyant both in their dress, their mannerisms in terms of how they walk, possessions -- they really want to be seen. There are a lot of undercurrents to this as well.

We talk about people with a line photography style, in this little psychological profile, as people who have probably been married and divorced twice, and have better than above average incomes. People who shoot a lot of texture, those are the people who get their feelings hurt the most. People who shoot a lot of patterns have a tendency to go through life unscathed. People who do all this color stuff can often be referred to as self-absorbed.

Keep in mind that every single one of these elements of design that people focus on are transient. You might be a line photographer for a couple of years, ten years, fifteen years, or a couple of months. All of sudden you're migrating to texture or you're migrating to color or you're migrating to pattern.

It's very similar to Gail Sheehy's novel Passages, she wrote about how we go through different phases of our life. Not surprisingly, the stuff that we photograph is indicative of what phase we are at in our life. That is really pronounced when one follows through and makes the point at least once a year to spend time with these elements of design.

I have often told my students, "If nothing else, be sure and hang out with the line photography style for a week, hang out with pattern, hang out with texture, and hang out with color just to take a temperature of where you are in the world and where you are in your life right now."

Take 50 of your shots and put them randomly in the contact sheet. Try to determine and define, "Are you a texture person right now or are you doing color?" It may not reveal itself clearly and as I've often told a few students, "Look, some people don't mature photographically until later in life -- until it finally all comes together."

You might be all over the board. That's by no means an indictment as much as if nothing else it's an indication that you're still having this great opportunity to experience the joy of discovery.

Audri Lanford: That is definitely true. I definitely love shooting all kinds of things right now.

In Summary

All artists know that their work reflects a bit of who they are. Parts of themselves go into their pieces. The same is true for photographers. Your photography style may give others, and yourself, insight as to what type of person you are.