Evolution of a Photographer: How Your Photography Style Transforms Over Time

If you undertake any creative activity for long enough, your output will evolve. Compare “Please Please Me”, The Beatles’ first album to the psychedelic concept album “Abbey Road”, released at the end of their career almost 10 years later, and you have a very clear evolution of a sound. The same can be seen in Kandinsky’s paintings, or in the writing of Margaret Atwood or JK Rowling. 

Change is inevitable as we learn, explore and discover new things about the world around us; it directly impacts our views and outlook. It’s no surprise this feeds our creative endeavours. Inspiration, influence, the impacts of life, all serve to alter the way we think and view ourselves and our place within the world. Often, we will consciously alter something to reflect the differences in our situation.

In my own photography, starting in the mid 2000s, I initially spent my time capturing urban cityscapes and objects, and consciously tried to capture the world humans have created for ourselves, but devoid of the human itself. I started using 35mm film, and progressed to digital, but I wanted to show the things we would leave behind if we all vanished instantly. I was young, naive, shy, still learning, and didn’t really have much interest in people or what they were doing; it was ‘things’, patterns and form that appealed to me and it led to a body of work which comprehensively depicts the environment of late 2000s UK, but without any of the people who were living there.

If you undertake any creative activity for long enough, your output will evolve.

As my career developed and I was required to shoot people in situations as varied as music gigs, corporate portraits, educational settings and travel, my experiences and skills changed and grew and I began to crave more people in my work. 

Looking through my images over time, they steadily progress from focussing on architecture and objects, to gradually featuring people. First it would be an occasional figure, distant and remote, almost accidental in the frame. Then they steadily become more prominent, the number of people increases and they start to become the focus.

My abilities and experience were directly impacting my personal work. As I grew more confident and skilled at shooting people for my corporate work, I wanted to feature this in my own projects as well. There is a clear trend throughout the 2010s right up until 2020.

The Covid-19 Pandemic marks a clear shift in my personal and professional photography. It effectively ceased in both cases for almost a year. And when it returned in late 2020, I was almost exclusively shooting food and beverages or landscapes - my briefs were often designed around showcasing open space, with no crowds and, ironically, a return to my early style of work capturing a world devoid of people. 

I lost a lot of confidence in my people-shooting ability over the next couple of years and it was only in 2022 with a new job and the easing of restrictions, that I began to work more closely with people again. My imagery was now much more vibrant, bright and light. I wanted to capture excitement, joy and fun in my photography. I’m not sure if this is a subconscious reaction to the impact of the pandemic, but I have noticed a distinct change in the way I expose imagery, with much more focus on bright, colourful and engaging moments. It is almost the complete opposite of my work from 20 years ago. I have even edited some of my older images to reflect my current sensibility, giving them a new lease of life in the way I now view things.

This is the evolution we all experience. But I now want to consciously push this even further, especially in my personal projects, by capturing more faces, getting closer and revealing emotion. I like photographs that makes me want to analyse, scrutinise and explore the frame - little details, or an ambiguous expression. When I started, I was achieving this through capturing intricate urban scenes or patterns; the detritus of society.

Now, I want to showcase the human side of our world, capturing small stories, faces, emotional reactions all in a single frame. It’s going to push me out of my comfort zone and force me to adapt and enhance my skills. But we should be doing that all the time.