>>3838170>>3838190Howdy. I had work, so apologies for lateness.
I think you have the right outlook with studying the work of other photographers, and general ways of improving. I had a lot of similar thoughts and experiences early on and it might help you validate how you feel if I shared them.
First, emulating work from photographers you like early on is inevitable. Don’t fight it, but absorb it naturally into your vision. Looking at photography and good artistic work of all types is critical, because that informs your vision. It’s possible to get by on raw talent for a time, but after a while your work will become flat and stale. Great work enhances your eye without compromising your own perspective.
Walker Evans copied Atget’s compositional technique and form wholesale when he was young, but eventually worked that into his own unique eye. That synthesis gave us the photos he took for the FSA, which is some of the most famous and well-made B&W body of work in existence.
When I began studying photography intensively, my work looked just like Lewis Baltz and David Plowden, my idols at the time. But after a year or so, I had a perspective which I could honestly from my heart call my own. I can’t say how this happened exactly, but it came from a lot of shooting, formal instruction, and subconsciously making adjustments to my perspective based on what worked and what failed on the contact sheet. I guess you have to let your vision “wake up” and give it nutrients in the form of both life experience and looking at work. Seems like you’re well on your way here, so don’t hesitate to study like crazy. The knowledge of how other people solved visual problems will inform your work more than any one thing.
I have one house rule for myself. I do not look at work for 2 or 3 days before I actually photograph. Work that’s fresh in my mind interferes a lot with my shooting process in several ways, so I have to stay away.
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