Style is intention, intention is choices.

Emerging Style

I am starting year two of photography, and I have been thinking a lot about style. That is the goal, right?

To have some super awesome unique style that anyone can pick out of a lineup.

Possibly, but we think of style as a destination instead of an emergent property. If it is an emergent property, then chasing style doesn't work. It is like trying to build a tree leaf first. Also, why style feels so elusive and difficult to pin down.

There are often no easy to identify hooks or aspects. That is because, like a good emergent property, slight variations in starting variables can lead to large differences in outcomes. There is still something recognizable in each, but it is difficult to explain.

If that is the case, then where does it emerge from? You hear a lot of advice asking you, What is your intention with your photography?

Finding Intention

I don't find that advice helpful because I don't yet know what my intention is.

What if you don't know? How can you make progress?

What if we flip it a bit and look at it as an emergent property, like style? Then our intention comes from the choices we make.

So in reality the starting point is our choices; from our choices our intentions emerge, and from there our style.

I like being in and taking pictures in cities. That is a choice. I love a lot of color; that is another choice.

So my intentions aren't as nebulous as I thought. There are things.

There are just not enough of them yet. That is what separates beginners from masters. Beginners make a lot of unconscious and inconsistent choices. One day they choose one thing, and another day something else. The work as a whole lacks the thread we call style.

Building on choices

With photography it is the same: lens choices, editing, lighting, and a ton of things I don't know if I like or don't like yet.

I need to pull them into the realm of the known.

So to build a style, we need to build our intention, which really means we have to examine all the choices we make and identify the ones we are subconsciously or unconsciously making and decide whether we like them or not.

This makes this process manageable and gives it structure. You don't have to solve or figure out some grand, glorified idea of what photography is. You just have to start building a list of choices. Every great piece of art was just that in execution. The paints, the brushstroke, or the scene or where to put a line.

This then becomes a journey of choices, where your intentions and style will then emerge from them.

And those choices, and by the transitive property, style will change with time. These can be your different eras of styles.