What's Your Trademark?

Flicking through some of the members' portfolios earlier this evening made me stop and think about something. It strikes me that we all probably have our own 'trademark' on our images, something that is recognisable in most cases as having been produced by a certain person. I'm unsure what mine is (would be interested to know what others think) as I'm a very poor judge of my own shots, but I'm sure that I must have one!

What is your trademark and why?

How easy (or difficult) is it to produce shots that don't bear your trademark?

Cheers
David

For you David, I'm spotting wide angle often, landscapes predominantly. A fine eye for that composition of something interesting in close, a great landscape behind and incorporating a dramatic sky. Personally what I see is someone who's gone out of their way to put themselves in a situation where those 3 elements are present. Nicely done by the way.

I'd like to say my trademark is fashion photography of volleyball and swim teams, but sadly that's not the case. Nor would the wife approve

Thanks Richard, joking aside what do you think your trademark is in a photography sense?

Some are easily identifiable, e.g. Maria's (Autumnlight) images stand out immediately, as do Sandinista's.

Regards
David

'tis a good question.

I opened this thread earlier but coudln't immediately think what my trademark was, if I had one at all. I still can't, but it's certainly got me thinking

That's a good question David and I believe Smeggy has similar thoughts to me right now...

I know in the video world I tend to make short pieces that look like family advertisements for supermarkets etc! They contain children, both my own and friends/family, so I don't publish them publicly. That side of things is kind of easy to describe.

My public stills work though, well I'll have to do some thinking to sort that one. Of late I've spent a lot of time challenging myself by finding pictures and styles that interest me and setting about recreating it, or my own take on it. The inspiration for the experiments very often comes from viewing the gallery posts of fellow forum members

It's all still part of a learning curve for me, as is achieving it with the relatively run of the mill equipment I can afford.

I suppose if anything my trademark is impulse shots. This might be an impulse to shoot something, a moment or scene that catches my eye, or an impulse to shoot something from a perspective that pops into my head, i.e from ground level, or a random dutch angle or blind without looking through the viewfinder or live screen.

The impulse might be to switch exposure modes, for example lock onto longer shutter speeds for motion blur, or lock onto wide apertures for shallow DOF.

The impulse might be to change lenses spontaneously, which is why I find it difficult to go out on single lens shoots, even though that can be inspiring as well.

David (davidstorm), I usually spot your photos easily in the gallery - its a combination of the locations and more specifically the colours I think ... you manage to find a particular autumnal / orangey hue to foliage which is very attractive.

You also tend to reproduce cloudy skies with very high contrast - I mean a high dynamic range within the clouds themselves, emphasizing deep dark moisture filled lower areas and very bright sun-reflecting highlights in the same sky. I, however, tend to reduce this contrast range by instinct, but for your shots it can be a straight give-away.

At the camera club, people do seem to recognise my work. I think its something others can do better than yourself.

I do think I can generally recognise, a Davidstorm, a Smeggy, A Dr. O, a Gareth, a Nigel, and a David trout

Not entirely style related, but I do like to taunt you with nice weather shots from New Zealand!

It was 33°C here yesterday and I had a great shot of the BBQ and a glass of wine all ready to post. And then my PC's hard drive took a dive and I lost it somewhere. I'll get another one ready shortly though I hope!

One member I recall (who doesn't appear in these parts very often these days) whose images had a very definite trademark was 'Axel Luther'. I could always spot his images from the thumbnail. I think also that Nuri ('Senn') has a very definite style, particularly with his bird images, most of which are shot in similar locations in his backyard.

The person that most springs to mind who doesn't appear to have any definite 'style' is Daz (Bettyswollocks), whose images are pretty random in nature. BTW, that's not intended to be a criticism, just an observation that the style and subject matter varies a lot from image to image.

I think it might be interesting for everyone to post a single image that they think is representative of their style?

Regards
David

Apart from my aerial shots, which are as much an accident of employment as anything else, I find I keep being attracted to scenes with lots of bright colours, even to images could be described as tacky, in spite of trying not to. Whether it's any sort of "trademark" I don't know.

eg

I can't think of one. I've just posted a selection from one shoot in the pics forum if that's any help