Preparing to get your photographic style.

How to do that?

You've already dabbled in photography and get over the first steps to obtain decent and technically sound images. You have read a lot of books and magazines, and you are knowledge-wise out of the rough, and your gear is complete.

Nevertheless, your development as a photographer is somehow stagnating - your pictures don't get any better. When you are taking photos, you feel like you're always making the same. Many have been there. How to change it and develop?

Ask yourself: What is your theme, what is your style? What do you want to express with your pictures? You realize: It's time for the next step. Just where - Do you need a workshop or coaching?

You face a challenge that many photographers encounter in the course of our photographic endeavor. Of course, we can learn from books. In workshops or one to one coaching, we can determine the technical aspects of photography - how we use our camera to expose correctly or where to place the central motif effectively. But even if we work with teachers in individual coaching, no one can teach us our personal creative process.

Also, if, on the one hand, we must be receptive to the knowledge and experience of others, it is not enough to blindly imitate these approaches. Each of us has his own way in the creative process, and these ideas here might help you - as a companion.

"Photos are created in the head," is a saying by famous photographers. And in fact, we do so before we press the trigger - a visual idea that inspires us to make an image. The task is to produce this conception in line with our visual creativity. But that is precisely what we cannot learn anywhere. We have to work it out for ourselves. We must learn to build a connection between this inner, often diffuse picture and the visible result, the photo.

The path of finding an individual theme, style, and expression is what makes the image ours. No workshop or coach can help - here we are on our own. So we are in a unique situation. We are both students and our individual, most personal teachers. Working something out, imitating ourselves or others, developing further, creating something new. From the concept to the result, the path is particular and never the same.

These ideas which I will spin out in the next blog postings are an attempt to aid you through this creative jungle. The intent is to provide you with a framework to improve your work. Where do you want to go, what are your goals, what do you actually want to learn?

Learning to get a unique style is an internal dialogue with none other than yourself. If the ideas I have might help, I'm satisfied.