Your subject and personal style in photography

I am an amateur photographer who is completely self taught. Admittedly, that is not saying much; I believe the quality of my photographs fall in the "okayish to decent" category, so I've achieved probably as much as a million other self taught amateur photographers. But, I really want to change that; I would want to decrease that number of people who can be compared to me to 10,000 maybe, self taught or not (one can dream, right?). After about 4-5 years of doing photography, my interested gravitated towards "controlled" studio photography and bought some studio equipment last year, to practice. (I've since realized that even in studio photography, "complete control" is an illusion. There is always luck involved).

One of the things that I've been reading quite often lately is the importance of personal style. Most recently, this article at Luminous Landscape discusses why personal style is important. Personal style is what differentiates you from any other photographer. If you and any other photographer is put under exactly the same conditions, both of you would probably come back with very different pictures. That is personal style.

Now, how do you go about finding your personal style? Probably the first thing you do is get inspired from others' work. That is really helpful in general to improve photography, but I found that to be of little help in trying to find personal style. I've probably found more success just thinking in my mind what I want to photograph next, and trying to set it up. One example of it is in the following picture: It is an attempt to have an early morning feeling with window light, but is actually taken in a studio at 10.30 pm in the night! There is no window in that direction.

Early morning looks from Aditi (click on image for larger version).

I tried to analyze why this photo works as intended: Firstly, there is of course the soft light which looks like there is a window just outside the frame. But the real reason is the combination of clothes, unmade hair and the ruffled instead of stretched curtains in the back. Her expression that looks like she is interested in what is outside adds to the overall idea (this is the luck part - only one in about 30 photos had this expression). Editing this photo was really simple: I took the RAW out of the camera and simply selected one of B&W presets in Lightroom.

This analysis also made me realize one thing: your subject and the environment makes or breaks the photo. Great sensor, great lens, and even great lighting will fail you if your subject is boring. And if you think about all the great photographs in history, you'll realize they are loved mainly because of their subject (look at these for e.g.: Afghan girl, Pepper #30, Girl holding kitten, Man jumping over puddle). It has motivated me to put more and more effort into setting up what is in front of my camera. Frankly speaking, though this realization looks very obvious, it is very easy to get lost in the whole technique (lighting is technique too) and editing it differently routine. The current fad of "Art" Filters like cross processing or miniaturization is one example.

Coming back the question of personal style, I think I've at least found a direction. I am going to take studio photos of people (or, rather, photos in controlled lighting), but I want people never to describe it as studio photo of someone. No more headshots on a white background. No more beauty shots. Instead, setup ever more unexpected scenes in front of the camera. Where the picture makes sense, but something one would not expect to see based on a verbal description, say. One great example I found recently for the above idea is the following photo of Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas by Martin Schoeller:

A great example of an unexpected visual setup but still displaying the dexterity of the gymnast. Click on the image to see more images of Olympic athletes from the same photographer.

Inventing technology vs market segment

One of the most widely discussed topics in the tech world is the patent warfare that is happening in the smartphone and tablet world. I specifically want to discuss the ongoing Apple vs Samsung patent case being discussed over their tablets. This case has taken the limelight for many reasons; it is one of the few cases which has went on to the stage of jury based trial, and also because it has revealed interesting facts about inside workings of Apple. But there is also widespread disagreement if that the case actually has any merit.

It is widely acknowledged that Apple really invented the modern smartphone. It created a device which was completely about touch, using no stylus. It designed and implemented a smooth and intuitive user interface totally from ground up. After that, anybody who didn't have a touchscreen smartphone like that was immediately relegated to the last generation. There was definitely a lot of invention going on around here - starting from the electronics of the device to the design and, crucially, the smooth implementation of the the UI.

A couple of years later, Apple released the iPad. Unlike in the case of iPhone, iPad was largely rejected by the media in the time between it was announced and it was actually released in the market. Everyone said it was a large iPod touch, and will never sell. But turns out, just the different screen size makes all the difference. Though the UI was mostly same, access to larger screen space makes web surfing easier, and viewing photos and movies more pleasurable. But, here is the big question: was there any new technology in the iPad? Was iPad an invention? I don't believe so. Apple showed the world that there is use and there is market for a touchscreen device with a larger screen. It did a great implementation of the device, with most people agreeing that is still the case. But an invention, like the iPhone, it was not.

Then why is the Apple vs Samsung tablet case a patent battle? The only possible patent that can be new in the case of tablets is probably the design of the device. The Wired magazine recently discussed few of the patents covered in this exact trial. Here is one of the drawings from Apple's iPad patent. I am not sure how you reacted on seeing it, but I just went wow! There is absolutely nothing specific about that design.

The second thing that people don't really factor in into these discussions is the effort required in the implementation. People think that once you have the idea, implementation is easy. That is simply not true: implementation is really hard to do. Android itself is the biggest example: From version 1 to version 2.3 (Gingerbread), overall Android was not as good as the iOS. Nexus One with Android 2.2 (Froyo) was still much more inconsistent than the iPhone 4 - both in terms of design of small operations and in the performance of the UI and the apps. And I am sure Google must have had to work really hard to bring Android to what it is now in the form of Jelly Bean. Punishing Samsung simply because it chose a similar shaped rectangle is really an injustice to all the Samsung engineers who've worked hard to do its implementation. Even with their work, Apple iPad is still the better device; I've used both Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and iPad 2 and assure you Samsung's Honeycomb tablet had really bad performance in comparison to the iPad. Apple enjoys a monopoly like market share in the tablet market not without reason. Samsung is getting exactly what they deserve directly from the market.

Eventually, I am sure Apple must have realized that it is next to impossible to eliminate its main competitors from the market through patents. People will design around the patents. My guess is that Apple wants the public to think that the competitors are stealing its inventions. And going through the comments on many tech news sites and blogs, that really seems to be working. Their official line about how others "must not steal their inventions" is pretty catchy too!