Personal Expression in Photography - Blog Series Article 1
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– What is personal expression in photography?
I’d like to start by suggesting that personal expression is more important to many of us than we realise. I will get deeper into this point in the second Blog in this series. For now, let’s define what we mean by personal expression, as many conversations on this subject can be inconclusive if the parties are not all speaking the same language – hopefully this is helpful.
Definitions:
Craft – the type of art you practice, photography, painting etc, and your combined knowledge, abilities & skills within the genres of that art
Sensibilities – your personal thoughts, feelings & emotions, (plus any other personal drivers) expressed through your craft
Creativity – the practice of the craft using the learned toolset of methods & approaches used to reflect one’s imagination or original ideas (inventiveness), this also includes experimentation outside learned approaches
Personal expression – the manifestation of the above in the work, and how you apply your toolset to the subjects to express your sensibilities within your art/craft, essentially, and how you portray your subjects using your sensibilities and creativity
Vision – the overarching cohesive set of your sensibilities, how you see the world in terms of your craft and the loose plans you may have to create cohesive & varied work within the art/craft
Personal style – the manifestation of repeated delivery (with elements of consistency, cohesiveness and authenticity) within your vision or visions
The objectives of using personal expression may be couched in these terms:
- putting your stamp on your work, introducing some of our personality
- incorporating a planned feeling, mood, message, interpretation to the image rather than purely recording what’s in front of us
- designing the nature, impact, style of the image for the intended audience, which includes self & the wider viewership
- putting the images we take into collections of work, projects or for specific outputs, like a book, a series of printed images.
“Pictures are exciting when they say something in a new manner, not for the sake of being different, but because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself [or herself, editor]”
A good photograph can be appraised from several perspectives, such as aesthetic appeal, technical perfection or delivery to a brief. Other ways of considering what good looks like, might be related to originality, creativity or perhaps the message it conveys and/or the feelings that it creates.
Add to this the consideration of what the photographer has achieved in communicating something of themselves within the image, some feelings, statement, personal perspective, artistic style, etc. this becomes an expression of some uniqueness of the photographer. I think this elevates the image from a record (albeit beautifully recorded), to something you have crafted with your personal uniqueness and expression.
So, a question that often arises is can a photograph be expressive but not good aesthetically or technically? Well, yes it can. It can also be all those things, technically good, aesthetically pleasing and expressive. We will talk on this later in one of the follow-up blog articles.
In the past I have often reflected that as a photographer perhaps I am a frustrated artist, but that would be to denigrate photography to something less that an art, and I believe photography is an equal to painting, sculpture, poetry and all other fine arts, don’t just take my word have a read of the life’s work of Alfred Stieglitz.
So in this article I have explored what personal expression is, some of the different forms it may come in and how it differs at least in definition from creativity.
In the follow up articles, I will explore what personal expression brings to our work & how we may feel about it, how it interacts with creativity, and how to introduce more personal expression into your work.
Trees on a Hill
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