Hello GT, thanks for your observations. I quite like reading your posts, you are a thoughtful photographer.
Perspective is a funny thing.
You ever see that TV advert for a newspaper where a skinhead in a bomber jacket is running down a street in DM’s? You see the advert from two angles, one where he is running towards a frightened old lady (to mug her..?) and another from a distance where it becomes clear that he is running to save her from a pile of falling bricks?
My point, though a bit oblique, is that you can look at things two ways. What you see as a strength in my photographs, i might see as a weakness (a lack of singularity of purpose)
If you are ‘serious’ you are told you needed to develop a single style, one that identifies and defines you. To me that means that you keep taking the same picture or variations of it for the whole of your life. I met an artist once that said she did “shitty beach paintings” for tourists cos they sell and with the little time she had left she did paintings that excited her.
I just can’t do that. There are too many situations, genres and interesting lighting challenges that i would have to ignore for the sake of having one style, though i suspect that this is the route to recognition and ‘success’. I enjoy taking photos too much to pass them up, so settle for doing what i like as opposed to doing what would lead to recognition. This is the beauty of being a hobbyist rather than a professional. I like photography too much to make it a career. and why FFS else would i use film (that makes no economic sense and by some is just passed off as nostalgia..) ? I do it because i like it. I have no one else to answer to. I work a day job that i like to pay for the film, i spend my own time taking, developing and scanning the film. I do what i like.
I’m a GP and AED doc, i tell my wife that GP stands for general photographer…
I do have styles, plural, though it all looks rather jumbled from my random posts on here, but if you look at the albums that i arrange them into on flickr there are themes; Eden2, Single figures, Post cards from the coast, Closer to home, Hebrides, People, Landscapes, Alone.
Anyway what i am saying, in my usual long winded way is that what you perceive as a weakness in your photos or technique, might from my point of view, be a strength..
Keep taking the photos, i enjoy them. If you do too, then surely that’s good enough?