Finding our voice
And why it is important.
Hello, I’m Gill and I write a photography blog inspired by the landscapes of Suffolk and beyond. Please subscribe to read more of my writing and visit my website to view my images.
When we start out on our photographic journey we buy a camera and spend a lot of our time learning the technical aspects of photography. We try to get to grips with our camera controls, learning what all the menu functions do and then we apply what we have learned to taking an image. We focus on exposure and composition and we practice how to take a photograph that excites us. And for some photographers this becomes the end of their journey. But if we want to progress and develop a greater meaning behind our photography we need to start looking a bit deeper. We need to look inside ourselves and work out who we are and what we want to say with our photography. We need to find the why behind the things that we do. We need to find our voice.
‘It is not what an artist does that counts, it is what he is’
Pablo Picasso
I didn’t really set out on a journey to find my voice, I think it just came to me over a period of time. Having said that, I do like to analyse and consider things and I think self reflection is a very useful process when we are developing as photographers. Finding out who we are, what makes us tick and what our passions are can be the first steps in developing our photographic voice.
So who am I?
I would consider myself an unlikely professional photographer. As a child I was painfully shy, I struggled in social situations and suffered from crippling anxiety. My favourite pastimes were generally solo pursuits; drawing, birdwatching, geology, walking in nature and photography. I excelled at sport but was pretty average at school and had to work extremely hard to achieve my grades. I left school at 17 for a career in Civil Engineering and ended up working in a drawing office producing plans for big road schemes when these were done by hand with pen and ink. It was a skill and it paid the bills but it wasn’t a calling.
I married young, had children, gave up work and twenty years passed before I realised I had no purpose. What was I doing with my life? It wasn’t until my 50’s that I could really answer this question.
There have been two constants in my life, two passions, and they have been nature and photography. And as I have grown older they have become more and more important. Over the years I started to spend more and more time in the natural world and would take more and more photos and after a while I began to share my work, firstly as physical images, then as part of magazine articles and now on my website, through my social media platforms but more importantly through my workshops, books and zines.
Photography for me has become much more than a job, it has become a calling and my reason for being. It is how I communicate my thoughts about the world around me and share the things that are important to me.
What makes me tick?
Nature and the beauty of the natural world are the two things that drive my photography. I can see so much wonder all around me and I want to share the things I observe. I want to show how special the natural world is to me and that it is there for everyone to enjoy if they wish to. But I also want to help protect it and so I try to communicate its fragility as well as its beauty. This is my passion and it is what drives my photography and I believe it is what has given me my voice.
Mark Twain once said
‘The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why’
Finding my voice in nature and photography and sharing my passion with others has become the thing that drives my work forward.
So how do we go about developing a unique voice in our photography and is it really necessary?
Firstly I would say that if you want to grow as a photographer, finding your voice is an essential part of that journey. Photographing what you are passionate about will ultimately improve your image making as I think we all take better photos of the things that we care about.
If you haven’t yet found what motivates you then I would suggest making time to experiment with your work. Give yourself some space to think as creative ideas are often born from time spent alone. Lots of my ideas have come from walks in nature where my mind is free to wander. I would also suggest looking back at your childhood and see what inspired you then, these can often be the things that are important to us and we just need to rediscover them.
The best way I have found to develop my voice is to work on projects. These don’t have to be big bodies of work made over many years they could just be small collections made locally when you have time to get out. But by focusing on themes instead of individual images you will begin to identify the things that really interest you.
Finding your voice doesn’t come easily. It has taken me almost 20 years to get to where I am creatively. Photography is more than just a job, it is calling and something that I am driven to share with others.
Developing your voice requires authenticity. It is so important to be true to yourself and the things that inspire you. There is no point in trying to emulate the work of others if it doesn’t ring true with your values or passions. Your voice is yours alone. It shows what is important to you and how you view the world and I think it is the most important legacy you can leave as a photographer.
The images in this article have all come from a short project that I completed in 2022. They were all made during a week in Coigach in the NW highlands of Scotland and became a book titled ‘At the edge of permanence’. Set against the seemingly permanent mountains of Assynt the project explores life in the liminal zones - those ever changing realms where no moments are the same.
If you are interested in finding out more the book is still available from my website.
I would love to hear your thoughts on finding your photographic voice, whether you feel you have one or whether it is still developing. Please feel free to share your thoughts or your own story below.
Thank you so much for reading and until next week enjoy your photography.
Gill
Thank you very much for sharing John.
Thank you for sharing your journey. Love your story and the images are sublime.
For me, my "art" came to me very quickly...within 6 months of picking up my first serious camera. One little thought to break from convention and move the lens during the exposure while birding in a local nature preserve last summer.
It's taken a few iterations to fugue out how to talk about the Why behind it but that has recently become clearer through a class where I observed other more experienced photographers talk about their own visions for their work.
Sometimes I have the sense that abstract / experimental ICM photography found me and is using me as a medium for capturing deeper stories about light.