If you’re a creative of any sort, you’ve probably heard the saying ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’ and gently rolled your eyes at the thought of someone copying your work that you’ve spent years developing, flattering. It’s not. It never will be. Let’s throw that old saying in the bin and put our foot down to defend our right to our work and our brand, which takes time and effort to build and establish.
When you’re starting out in the industry, it’s hard to find your feet and it is completely normal to look towards your counterparts for guidance and inspiration but there is such a fine line between inspiration and flat out, copying. So? Here’s a blog post on how to find your own style as a creative and why you shouldn’t copy your creative counterparts.
1) Do your best not to look to other people for inspiration. Pinterest is the best option to create mood boards and find inspiration, where you can draw different ideas from completely different places and put ideas together to create your own style, figure out what part of the images that attract your eye you like and use the idea to create your own magic. Find inspiration in things around you, rather than from that creative you follow, copying isn’t worth it because 1) you always get caught and it’s an awkward conversation and you’ll lose your credibility as a creative. 2) the copy never, ever looks as good as the original and you will just get frustrated. There has been moments I’ve wanted to recreate one of my own images and I just can’t do it a second time.
2) Find your voice. In a world full of creatives with hundreds of people doing the same thing, you’ve got to find your own style and run like the wind with it. Find your voice by looking for things that really fuel your soul and you WANT to photograph, for me it’s colours, wine and beauty products. For you? It might be your morning coffee or your favourite Hydrangeas. You want people to see your work and go ‘is that yours?’ without even having to put your name, it’s what will set you apart from other creatives. The stronger and more distinct your artistic voice, the more likely you will seize opportunities.
3) Shoot for fun, shoot often. Even if I don’t have any work on, I always put aside some time during the week to do my own shoots so I can play around, find new techniques and create imagery that fuels my creativity. It also means you have a good collection to add to your portfolio, even if you’ve had no work. This also gives you the change to experiment and find your style, put different colours together and try different camera angles without the pressure of doing the images for clients.
4) Try new things, even if it completely fails. Do you know how many times I’ve taken images and thought ‘what the hell was I thinking with this one?’ maybe hundreds, it may be thousands. Sometimes I can shoot for three-four hours and hate absolutely everything. It takes time. You won’t become an expert overnight and not every shoot is going to be perfect. If one idea fails, try another. A lot of creatives see a perfect image on Instagram and think ‘how hard can that be?’ but in reality it’s taken hundreds of shots and hours editing. Don’t be too tough on yourself and always try new things, devote some time each week to experimenting and coming up with new ideas, rather than just adopting them from others.
5) Have a think of what kind of clients you want to attract. When you think of your dream clients, what do they look like? Write them down. Manifest them. Create imagery that if your dream client were to see, they would want to hire you because your style fits with their brand. A brand with a very sophisticated, neutral style isn’t going to go for a creative who does a lot of colourful imagery so figure out your style based on what type of clients you are intending to attract and give it your own twist.
So, have we covered all bases? Now go out there and have fun, play around with your style and don’t directly copy people in your industry. After all, we’re all friends here.
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery but really, it’s just annoying.