I got into a conversation the other day about my background and influences. It was interesting for me to realize that most of the photographers who influenced me have basically nothing to do with the kind of work that I do. And yet they are still very much a part of my photographic self.
As with my post about learning from other photographers who are not necessarily in your niche, I’ve tried to learn from or be outright be influenced by every photographer and even some individual photographs that I encounter. I wanted to be a sponge and from what stays absorbed in my porous head becomes my approach. I think that when you learn one way of doing anything it’s very easy to come out of the process as compartmentalized as your learning method.
We’ve all seen the results: “Ah, you went to (insert important name here) school. I can tell.” Or “Who did you assist for? … yeah I can see the influence”. It’s important to have a style, approach or whatever to your work but it needs to be your own and when you are learning an art form it’s very easy to spend a lot of formative time attempting to duplicate the work of the one artist you most look up to. Then it becomes hard to break that down and rebuild yourself into you.
