A style for a photographer is the key, the starting point. You can’t go anywhere before having one. It means that people can just by looking at your pictures guess they are yours. It seems to be some kind of magic but it’s absolutely not. A style it’s like a recipe minus the experience and the talent of the photographer. It conforts your clients into choosing you it tells them what you see is what you will get from this photographer. That’s the practical purpose of a style. And your portfolio should show all of this, what you are good in, not that you can do everything.

Basically most photographers just stick to one or two genre of photography, and do over and over the same pictures. The simplest and safest recipe. No risks no surprises… like a Big Mac. You eat one whenever you want something reassuringly familiar and cheap when you are far from home and your stomac had had his share of exotic experiences.

So don’t go for the cheap, for the McJob, when you get a style, a simple recipe, try to improve it relentlessly, try to make it more complex, add new ingredients to it. Keep it subtle too! How to achieve this? Know yourself describe your own photos in a few words… and rate them. Or at least what part of your photography you need to improve.

Here is a step by step definition of a style, beginning with the basics:

• digital or film
• color or b&w
• close up or full shot
• depth of field
• lighting technic
• subject (portrait or landscape or …)
• narrative or document
• statement

Mine would be: digital, colorful, full shots, medium depth of field, lightings that suits best to the narrative (dramatic or high key mostly), portraits and… my statement would be the rich (the location thus not shallow depth of field and the styling) and the beautiful (model, hair and make up) with a pinch of references (movies, tv shows, art, …)

To go further I need to focus more on the narrative by introducing an offscreen dimension. Right now my pictures looks more like a poster than a movie-still with the offscreen dimension I will get the viewer much more involved into my photography.