I had a chat recently with a friend about consistency. Their concern was a lack of consistency with their editing, but it got me thinking about artistic consistency, and how important (or not) it really is.
Over the years I’ve thought a lot about, and strived for a consistent look and feel to my work.
When I once dabbled with outsourcing what I realised at that time was that my editing wasn’t all that consistent. Not in a bad way, but my editing style warped and morphed with each wedding depending on the conditions, lighting, skin tones, etc etc… and for that reason, outsourcing (and more recently AI editing) just don’t work for me. I want that freedom… I want that lack of rigid consistency in my editing.
What I do strive for, ultimately, is consistency in two areas.
Capture. And curation.
By consistency of capture I mean how you approach your shots on a wedding day (or any time you’re shooting photos).
I’m a cliche 35+85mm photographer. 70-80% of my work is on the 35 by active choice.
I shoot manual everything – including white balance (but not including focus). I adjust my white balance kelvins whenever the lighting conditions change on a wedding day.
If you’re an AWB shooter, this isn’t as much work as it sounds. To me it’s no different to changing ISO or aperture as a creative decision.
I see light in a very specific way too… one of the best things I’ve learned over the years is how to read the light, and how to position myself or my subjects in relation to what I’m seeing.
And when I’m not getting a ‘look’ I like from manipulating my settings around the natural lighting conditions, I use flash.
What that gives me is a very consistent ‘feel’ to my work because it’s mostly at one focal length, all manual settings, using light in a certain way.
I think because I use minimal equipment, and manual settings, and build my approach around my own personal taste of lighting, my work looks like my work straight out of camera. That has always, and will always be my goal. Why? Because this means I’m achieving, most of the time, that all important consistency of capture style.
In itself that gives me a fairly natural consistency with my editing, because most of the work is being done at point of capture, not in Lightroom. Even though, like I said earlier, my editing style morphs a little with each wedding.
There are many reasons that consistency of capture is difficult to maintain, here are a few:
To feel a freedom to shoot the way you want to shoot, I think the people booking you need to see and feel a strong consistency in your work.
It’s the old adage “show what you want to shoot” right?
“But Adam, I want to shoot weddings and I need everyone to book me so I need to show a bit of everything.”
Hmm.
Consistency of curation is incredibly hard for photographers for a number of reasons, here are a few of them:
Here are my top 2 rules for consistency of curation:
If you’re so deep in the spiral of social media and awards despair that you don’t even know what you like any more, the only solution to this is to switch off the machine for a bit and find your way back to creating instinctively. That’s the only way to find out what your work feels like when it’s coming totally from you, in my opinion. I’m in a period of doing exactly that right now. It’s not a 2 week thing either.
Let’s talk quickly before I finish about the analysis thing. Creative critique has crippled us all. I see so many amazing FEELING photos, and the photographer is so quick to go “aah but I cut the fingers off” or “yeah but…” — it needs to stop. I like to think the silly obsession with photographers critiquing work so readily and flippantly is coming to an end, but it’s still such a simple way to produce content that I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon.
Oops, rant.
What I’m saying is it doesn’t always matter if the fingers/hand/foot/whatever is chopped off, if the photo feels great.
It doesn’t matter what that other photographer thinks, if the photo feels great.
If it feels great to you, it’s one of your great photos. Stand by it and say I TOOK THAT.
The more you do that, the more you will achieve the consistency of curation that’ll bring you the consistent stream of clients who forking adore what you do.
And BONUS you’ll love your own work more.
Technical perfection exists, but it can kill that actual feeling of wonder that only comes with your own version of imperfection.
Consistency of capture comes from knowing innately how you work and why you work that way and committing to it.
Consistency of curation comes from that weird sense of instant pride you feel when a shot comes on screen, and instantly knowing that’s one your past, present and future clients need to see.
Thanks for reading, I know it was a long one this week, but trust me it was a lot longer before I took the editing hatchet to it! I might actually make a longer podcast on this subject! Have a great week of clicks!
Adam
PS – Notice I said in that last paragraph about consistency of curation “what your future clients need to see” – make sure to keep this in mind whenever you’re curating your work. Curate it for ONE SET OF PEOPLE. Don’t try and please other photographers at the same time as trying to attract future clients. Pick one. Pick future clients. The less you try and impress other photographers, the more impressed they will be, because now your work will conflict with rather than conform to the status quo. Nothing makes sense any more. And yet it all makes perfect sense.
