Friday, October 23, 2009

Style

The more I view the work of other photographers my age (I have some kind of competitive streak in me that has yet to be unleashed) I'm realizing that I don't have a defined style to my photography. And I haven't had nearly enough practice or work on my portfolio. I'm not as good at this as I would like to be. I would like more technically constructive criticism from my professors, rather than "this doesn't really work, Mary, at least not for this project." Why not tell me what I can do better? Why not teach me some kind of tips and tricks? Why not teach me how to properly light a scene? I so strongly dislike that photojournalism has to be this field where they tell you an armful of photographic techniques, beat the rule of thirds and using the full manual setting into your head and expect you to just improve. I've been doing all of these things on my own for over a year now and I've just been stagnating at this point of being a mediocre photographer with an slr.
Every girl with a decent digital camera thinks she's a photographer. I feel that I'm on the border of becoming just another person like that. My work doesn't stand out in my class the way I expected I would. I feel like I'm constantly trying to prove that I'm talented, not to any one person but myself.
I have a flickr pro account. That makes me legit, right?
I just want someone with experience to tell me what exactly I'm doing right and wrong and what it really takes to succeed. I know I picked the wrong field to expect that from. I just have a lot of questions I can't answer for myself. What kind of photography can I do for a living? Photojournalism, portraits, weddings, architecture, landscape/travel, commercial, fashion? Nothing that I've tried has really stood out to me as my favorite of them all. I'm not amazing at any one type and it would certainly be impossible to do them all... so what do I do?
Here are my photos from my 3rd project on Tourism.
Riverwalk
Sunset on the river. Meh. Not crazy about this shot because anyone could have done this.
Riverwalk3
View of the Gervais St. Bridge from the Riverwalk. This was my favorite and my classmates seemed to like it too. Wasn't the best though. And here's the same shot but with a different focus.
Riverwalk2
Rammer Jammer
And here's Alabama's Million Dollar Band. Thought this could work for tourism... leading lines, contrast, etc. Photographic elements abound!
The Fair!
I really liked this shot, but one of my classmates had some huge beef with people being blurry in the foreground (she also had a huge issue with any shot without people in it and it was a little annoying).
I try really hard. Fo real.

1 comment:

  1. im not a expert, in very much of anything, but it seems to me, that your lacking only one thing, confidence! mary as stated i am not a visual media professional, but youre interning at the souths oldest news paper getting front page coverage all the time, youre pictures in my opinion are always always good and well take and visual dynamic, (also the bottom one is my favorite i like the out of focus blurred fast moving foreground against the more still background its an amazing shot, your colleges negative criticism make me question their competence. i think its okay you havent picked a filed or specific style as it lets you take any direction youd like, and thats a huge gift. : ]

    ReplyDelete