consistency
Oh, the delicate balance between consistency, working a subject matter or location over years, and avoiding stagnation. To make matters even worse, we live in a fast paced world that demands new and shiny things every couple of weeks. What is a photographer to do with all of this?
Experimentation is a fundamental part of photography. Our work needs consistency, though, and change for the sake of change can lead to procrastination.
Consistency is key to great photography: we want to have similar aesthetics and subject matter across a collection of images - be it a book, a zine or any other kind of project.
I believe that new ideas are very important as well, though. Staying flexible, experimenting with new mediums, shapes or textures, creating something new and different to push your creativity beyond its previous limits.
The balance between consistency and flexibility is a delicate one: we don't want to be all over the place and try to do everything, but we don't want to get stuck at doing things the same way over and over either.
As you know, I like the square format. I find square images very pleasing to the eye and it also brings consistency when I put them together (there's no landscape vs portrait debate).
Lately, I've been experimenting with panoramas: very long images. I don't always take them with that idea in mind, I "see" during the editing instead. I don't even use special equipment or software to create them, they are just crops.
I've also been shooting with my phone using an app called Slow Shutter Cam, which lets me take longer exposures than the stock camera app. I like the effect it creates when used walking or even from a moving vehicle.
These are just two of the things I'm doing to switch things up and keep my mind fresh and away from doing the same thing over and over.
Remember to be consistent and to stay flexible, find the balance that works for you.
Waking up and getting out early in the morning is always, always worth it. Some days, though, the payoff is huge. After a month and a half of daily outing early in the morning here in Indiana, I finally got what I was looking for.
Read MoreConsistency:
consistent behavior or treatment
In photography, being consistent means creating images that look similar. Maybe we shot them with the same camera and lens, maybe we made them look that way in post-processing.
Let's talk about consistency, when we should be consistent and when it's ok to switch things.
I am a big believer in telling stories through a collection of images, be it in a zine, book or exhibition. Let's call it a project: a vision we have, a message we want to deliver, something we want to tell.
Generally speaking, I want to make all the images in a project look very similar, to have the same aesthetic. Otherwise, it might confuse the viewers.
Think of a book: all the words, letters and sentences are the same color and size. Only titles are different to make them stand out, to mark an end and a beginning. All the pages follow the same layout as well. It'd be too distracting otherwise.
There are a few things we want to keep constant or very similar: if an image is monochrome or color, the amount of grain, the contrast, the aspect ratio.
We can emphasize the importance of an image making it bigger, spanning through two pages, for example, or even changing the aspect ratio just for that one.
Different projects might require completely different approaches, though. I believe it is ok to not be consistent between projects: one could be in color, shot with a phone; the next one could be in monochrome using a medium format camera.
If we pick up a different book, we don't mind to see another font being used, more or less margins, a different size altogether. As long as it's kept consistent through the whole book.
I try to apply the same principle to my photography: to be consistent in a project, treating all the images the same way, so they form that body of work where none of its components is more or less important but just another piece of the puzzle.
That's what consistency offers: being able to create a cohesive collection of images that tell a story.
