 How many photographers does it take to change a lightbulb? It takes a hundred One to change a lightbulb itself and the other 99 to say how they could have done it better It's probably fair to say that most of us enjoy getting praise from time to time a little ego boost on a regular basis And it's also fair to say that we don't particularly like to hear criticism, which is probably why we are so much towards pleasing others It takes a brave person to plow their own creative field To truly create something that is different and stands out amongst the crowd I firmly believe that the reason a lot of photographers never really achieve all that they are capable of creatively and I certainly include myself in this is that we are focused too much on pleasing others with our artistic endeavors And not on being brave enough to express ourselves completely and without fear of judgment What happens when we give ourselves permission to create work that speaks with our own unique voice? To make your photography stand out and be noticed requires you to be brave How's it? How's it? Recently I was watching a video by Ethan Hawke about permission and creativity and about how we as creatives want to produce work Be it you know a painting or a photograph or a book or a piece of music that the world considers good That it considers to be important or worthy and and therein lies the problem You know, it's not really up to us to decide if what we create is any of those things. It's up to the world itself For years I was struggling with expressing my own creative voice through my photography because I was too focused on trying to please others From the comments on the channel, it's clear a large number of you watching this are looking to try and find Your own voice in photography to discover the style that best suits you and the work that you want to create I thought if I share with you my own journey about how I Came to become at peace with my photography rather than seeing it as a battle for popularity It would help you in your own creative journey in professional circles There's a saying where you you shoot for the sale or you shoot for the soul When I moved back to the UK from South Africa about 12 years ago I had basically abandoned everything in my photography that I felt was natural And I tried to copy the work that I was seeing other wedding photographers doing at the time Back then I was focused on wedding photography rather than the portraits and for me it felt that to be successful I would need to be doing what other people in that arena were doing I was I was too afraid to put my own work out there in my own unique style So rather than stand out and be noticed because of my photography It became just like everybody else's and later on we'll address this in a little bit more detail about how the Internet has created This echo chamber of homogenous and a nondescript photography There are three things which have helped me rediscover my voice in photography and each of them I know has shaped the way that I approach the creative side that the art of photography if you will Of course, their artistic merit isn't really for me to decide this video isn't about how you can be more artistic or creative Or have a deeper meaning in your photography. It's about feeding your own soul and to do that You need to do this first You need to stop worrying what other people think I Get it. It's natural. We create something and ask the world. What do you think? You've probably seen a post somewhere on a forum or a Facebook group or somewhere You know the one somebody posts up a picture of one in color one of black mice is all I can't really decide which is better Please please help me choose the right one and right there is the death knell of creativity Why is that person asking the others to tell them what form their voice should take? Did Leonardo da Vinci take a poll about the various smiles on the Mona Lisa? So he could then paint the one that pleased the most people Asking random strangers on the internet to essentially vet your photography isn't going to help you discover your own style It will help you create images that look like everywhere every other person's images though Take a look through an Instagram feed of portraits for example, you know Most of them look okay, but very very few really stand out and this is because they are all the same essentially This endless pursuit for validation of their photography through the digital likes of strangers means that that space has become one giant echo chamber If you're new to photography the lure of acceptance of the hurt I get it It's strong to feel like you're now part of this tribe in their beginning to accept you as one of their own by giving you Some form of approval Perhaps this is why people who are learning the craft of photography push back so hard against honest critique of their images It's almost like it's a suggestion that they aren't actually one of the group yet It can be immensely scary to do your own thing to invite scorn or or even worse Actually no reaction at all with with work that goes it against a sort of an established Well sort of an orthodoxy in sort of whatever Sean you you know You could you enjoy the most if you want to discover your own true voice in your creative endeavors You need to be brave you need to grasp this nettle of experimentation as you try new things The rules you learn as you discover the craft of photography aren't aren't rules really certainly not in the absolute sense Pictorialism was the prevailing idea once in photography and then a few were brave enough to stick their heads above this parapet and suggest a different approach and of course the photo secession was then born By all means understand and learn the basics of photography and being control of your medium And that's the key word just being control Don't let the rules stand in the way of your own vision be brave and take the chance What advice would you give yourself if you could go back to that first day you held a camera in your hand Please feel free to share in the comments below so someone else can hopefully benefit from your unique experiences In any art before you can truly create you need to develop your skills by following lessons and often There will be an exercise in copying existing work No one teaches you piano and expect you to practice using your own original compositions No, you go and you play chopsticks for for hours at a time And you could probably guess the person in this room who's never learned to play piano because you probably don't practice with chopsticks Infotography you follow some tutorials that teach you things like exposure f stops shutter speeds You know all those sort of things Then you see articles about learning how to create creepybocker and some other technique that helps you technically This isn't really what I'm kind of meaning by copying things for me copying is about finding Inspiration and then using it a great pleasure of mine is to visit the National Portrait Gallery in London and to wonder It's it's lovely halls not only do I like to photograph the ceilings there and his cafe But I found so many seeds of my tears that I'm able to plant into my mind and then cultivate into images at a later date Copying is using the things that resonate with you and adding them to your own creative mix If you love the films of someone like, you know Wes Anderson for example feel free to create images with that single vanishing point composition that he likes to use so much Figure out what you love in the things that you love and get closer to them in your own photographs. I Grew up in Milton Keynes before I moved to Joe Berge in South Africa and they're two very different places if you're not familiar Milton Keynes in those days were still new and What's called a new town and none of the trees have been planted So it was this kind of weird futuristic landscape of a very small saplings and these giant glass and steel buildings And it wasn't until decades later when I was taking a trip to Ikea that I first It hit me the realization that my love for urban landscape photography Which was full of very sharp and hard forms was echoing what I'd seen around me growing up and somehow these monolithic almost church-like Buildings had implanted themselves somehow in my subconsciousness South Africa then gave me other things to copy the wide-open vistas this sense of space the hard Angular lighting of that baking midday sun Apparently this is the worst time to take photographs if you follow the rules But for me it informs some of my own photography If you've been around this channel long enough, you'll know that I'm it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of photography books It's it's almost it's almost an addiction and I'm quite happy to take ideas from these Photographers and just let them inform my own work Just as when you read, you know any biography of any photographer. They too will probably mention Who that photographer was influenced by what I don't want you to do really is simply look in one place And then just slavishly copy what you think will make your work popular when you do this you're actively Sabotaging your own creativity and any chance to speak with your own voice and stand out At the end of this video, I'll be putting up on screen a playlist for you with the rest of the videos I've created about learning to speak in your own voice If you're interested in understanding more about how we can communicate visually, I think you'll find those videos exceptionally useful The third element of learning to speak in your own voice is to put those two things together The idea of copying and the idea of not being afraid not being scared and to mix them and bake them for as long as is As is as is required. I want you to remember that it's important in Finding your own voice that there isn't an endgame. There's no final boss level, you know that you need to beat there isn't a Point where you reach peak photography Every great photographer realizes that every single day they should be and can be improving Image in Cunningham, it was a famous photographer once remarked, you know She was asked which of my photographs is my favorite and while it's the one that's going to be taken tomorrow spending hours creating photography with the express intent of getting likes or shares or what other Any other vanity metric you choose to measure the success of your work against will just add to this ever-increasing pool of imagery whose sole purpose is just to shout louder than the next in the hope of being noticed If being noticed for your creative work is really what you desire then stop trying to please as many people as possible As I mentioned earlier back at the beginning of the video My greatest mistake when moving to the UK as a photographer was to abandon my existing style in the hope of Appealing to as many people as possible and I'm going to say this next thing slowly because I want to I wanted to sink in with you When you try to please everyone You please no one I'm going to say that again When you try to please everyone You please no one Average is boring Average is something you can ignore Creating photography or any art that looks like the rest of its contemporaries is creating average work If you stop worrying about what people think Create work that is drawn from things that inspire you you will have started to find your voice That voice is unique to you and will make your photography stand on its own Some people may not like it some people may like it hell a lot of people are going to tell you that your photography is just wrong It's rubbish or just it just plain sucks But you know that's okay It's absolutely okay. The only person you need to impress with your photography is you Not user dot dot slash Photoguru 84 or any other of the faceless masses falling over themselves on the internet to try and please others If you really really must seek some feedback then ask people whose opinions you respect People who will give you honest critique and not just try to tell you how to make your photograph into something that looks like theirs Keep adding elements to your inspiration bank It doesn't matter where you draw them from and I want you to remember to be brave Back in the 90s when I was a student and young there was a song by a guy called Baz Lerman called sunscreen and it was like a list of Suggestions about how to live your life and in there was one line That I took to heart and then I lost and I forgot and I rediscovered it and It's do something every day that scares you It was scary for me initially to sit down and create these videos I was told that to be successful on YouTube You need to create Videos about lenses gear reviews, you know the sort of thing right, but you're here and if you have subscribed to this channel You probably have done so not because of my amazing video skills or the way that I have shown you lenses It's because I'm sharing with you I'll love a photography in a way that is unique to me not by going some sort of formula or some script I'm being me and it was scary and it still is to think that there are 65,000 people over the last 28 days or something who have watched me sit and talk I'm sure some of them have gone. Oh You suck. I really nonsense some people have left me comments and they disagree with some of things I say but a lot of people has said I I read this resonates with me if I'd stuck to the rules I Think this channel would still be languishing amongst the other hundreds of thousands of people who think that the quick way to making some money online Is to put up some lens reviews and stick an affiliate link in the descriptions. I Want you to do something every day that scares you No matter where you are on your creative journey I hope that this is at least inspired you to think about your own voice My sincerest desire throughout all of these videos on my channel isn't to tell you how to do something Or the photographers you must like but to give you the opportunity to take the suggestions that I make and turn them into something unique to you on The screen right now is a playlist about how you can have more control over your photography in the way that you can express your own voice Click right up there to jump in whilst you're still in the zone If you'd like to support the channel, please consider buying me a coffee on the link in the description Thanks ever so much for joining me