What is Vision

A couple of posts ago I wrote about photographic style. In a simplistic nutshell, style is how our photographs, as a whole, look. It is the tangible or digital manifestation of work. Style helps to give identity to our work and connect it to us, as the artist. Among many of the photographers whose work I most admire, I can usually tell who photographed what by their individual style.

Styles will evolve over time, or even differ between respective subject matter or projects.

Vision is less easy to define, because it is so encompassing. Vision is who we are, as individuals. It is a culmination of everything we have witnessed, things we have done, feelings we have expressed or hidden, and our personal likes and dislikes. It is how we were brought up and what we were taught, how we rebelled against parts of both. It is our interests and passions. It is why we do what we do.

Think of vision as our photographic soul.

It is not something we develop or work on. It is not something we can hope to find, because we already possess it. The best photographers go with the flow of their vision, be honest to it, and allow themselves to be unique and to say something meaningful.