Last week on the blog, I shared about the importance of having consistency in your business. If you haven’t had a chance to read that, make your way over there now. Go ahead, I’ll wait for ya. 🙂

Alrighty, now that everyone is up to speed on the three different areas that are important in order to have consistency in your business, it’s time to think about how your style fits into that. Honestly, choosing your style is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in this business, but it can also be one of the hardest. Oftentimes, it can take a photographer years to feel like they’ve finally figured out their style, and that’s okay. However, the faster that you can define your style, the faster that you can build a brand that communicates it and the easier it will be to cultivate consistency in your business. See, it goes full circle!

The Kelsie Lynn Photography brand is very personal because it is essentially describing me, the photographer. When I thought about what I wanted my style to look like, I knew that I wanted to somehow convey my personality through my images. I decided on the following three words that would be the foundation for my business: joyful, vibrant and genuine. At least one of these words if not all three shows up in every image of mine (or at least it should!!). You may be thinking to yourself, how can I edit my images to look joyful? Well, you really can’t if the people in them don’t look joyful. I use my editing as a tool to enhance the emotions that were already captured in the photograph. That’s why when you think about your “style” there’s so much more to it than just your editing style. You also have to take into consideration the technical side of your images as well as what goes into creating your images (the posing and composition, etc.).

Obviously, the editing is the most noticeable portion of your style. Will it be bright and airy, dark and moody, clean, film-y, etc. There are so, so, so many routes that you could take with this, but keep in mind it is incredibly important that you are able to produce that style consistently. Next comes the posing. What will your approach to posing be? Are you willing to create moments or does everything need to happen candidly? Are your favorite images very structured and posed, or are they poses that naturally happened? Posing can be a tricky thing to learn, but you need to have a consistent posing style that fits with the “vibe” of your images. The last piece of the puzzle is the technical side of your images. Will you use prime lenses or zoom lenses? A digital camera or a film camera? How much of an emphasis do you put on composition? How do you handle certain lighting situations? The technical part of your “style” is definitely one that comes with time. You’ll learn what lenses you like and you’ll gain more of an eye for composition. These things just don’t happen over night. You have to be intentional about creating a style that fits your brand, and you can do that by learning about what you like and what you dislike.

Defining my style has honestly been one of my favorite parts about building my business. I’ve loved watching my style transform into what I’ve always wanted it to be. I have the foundation set in stone, so now I’ll I have to do is tweak things here and there until I get it just right. If this is something that you’ve been struggling with, or you are simply interested in hearing more, send me a note and we can chat. <3