Becoming Unmistakable.
When Good Stopped Being Enough.
As you progress as an artist, you discover what you love; you build confidence in your abilities, and eventually, you move toward your voice. For many of us, this is a complex and often tumultuous experience. Not because we are bad, but because we need to let go of expectations and seeing our work through someone else’s voice, and lean confidently into our own.
At some point, the problem is no longer technical. You are competent and understand the fundamentals of photography. Your photos are sharp, your exposures are correct, and you can produce a clean edit. Nevertheless, something feels like it is missing in the final piece. That missing piece is not knowledge or comprehension; it is permission. When you decide to lean fully into your own style, your own voice, and embrace the journey ahead.
In my last post, “From Algorithm to Authenticity: The 2025 Reset”, I discussed the performance trap of social media and the havoc that it wreaks on us as artists. In this edition of Led by Light, I want to discuss chasing someone else’s voice.
Here is the part that nobody says out loud… You are not a beginner anymore, but you don’t quite feel like “you” yet. I want you to know that you are not alone in this. It is something we all go through, and a natural part of the journey. I want to share with you my experience in finding myself, and the milestones that set me free.
ABOVE AVERAGE
When you open up social media, what do you notice? Look beyond the photos, the ads, and the rest of it. Look deeper. The common themes and styles that are ever present. A handful of people adhere to the bright, punchy, colorful edits, while another group may follow a more refined look. There are countless styles, edits, and techniques out there that people pool into. The common denominator is that they all gravitate towards something that could be categorized as average for that given style. This is neither good or bad, just, more of the same.
With enough time, tutorials, presets, incredible locations, and so on, most people can produce a “good” photo. It has a clean composition, a nice edit, and it looks polished. The thing about it though is that “good” is not the goal. The goal should be work that feels like you, work that you would recognize even without your name attached to it. But how do we get there?
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION
In my early days of digital photography, I could describe my work as technically competent but creatively boring. Not that I was struggling to take photographs, I was struggling to make them mine. A handful of photographers inspired me over the years, and I would endlessly compare my work to theirs. I kept trying to reverse engineer their style, the edit, their mood. I thought if I could just crack their code, I would finally be proud of what I was creating, too.
What I learned was that this is self-deception disguised as ambition. It feels like dedication, growth, and the pursuit of truth. However, it is actually a quiet form of self-sabotage. You are not asking, “What do I see?” you are asking, “How do I make it look like them?” There is a very important difference between these two.
What is worse is that it is easy to fall back into this trap of comparison and doubt. Last year, I was so deep in it I had not even recognized until October! I had fallen to a point where I disliked photographs I once loved; I dreaded picking up the camera. I talked myself out of experiences that I used to be thrilled to have. Why? I was looking at my work and comparing it to others that I thought were better. Their voice, their style. Through that process, I had completely lost sight of myself.
When I took a step back and looked at my work as its own entity, I saw something else. Not only had I continuously met my vision plenty of times, I had exceeded it, repeatedly. I was so fixated on judging it through comparison that I could not recognize my own style. I don’t think I am alone in this.
We see something we love, and we want that result. What we don’t realize are the distinct differences in so many aspects of the final piece. The location is different, the conditions, the approach, but most importantly, the vision. Skill can get you to good, but vision takes you to yours. What someone else is producing is from their own vision. It is up to you to lean into yours. What is theirs is theirs; what is yours is yours. Embrace that.
Skill is learnable; it is repeatable. Shareable, even. You can study it, practice it, and earn it through getting out there and pursuing what you love. But vision is unique. It requires honesty, taste, restraint, and a willingness to disappoint the part of you that wants approval. Which is necessary if you want to satisfy the part of you that wants truth. You need to give yourself permission to be you.
THE PURSUIT OF PERMISSION
Some years ago, I started journaling. And through that process, I found five things that help me to recenter myself and get me back to my baseline when I feel that “shift” in myself. I shared these below with the hope that it helps you to do the same thing, too.
Name the feeling first
Before you even take the camera out and set it up, ask yourself, what am I feeling, and how do I want this shot to feel? Once you have decided what you want to say, that should guide every single in the field decision going forward.
Find what matters
Study the photographs that you enjoy, and ask yourself, why? Go beyond incredible location or perfect light and ask yourself what you love about it beyond superficial beauty. Find what matters, and work to build that into your voice. Think shutter speeds, depth of field, composition, etc.
Embrace the two-pass edit
This was a big one for me. Learning to edit in two passes. On the first pass, we are aiming to get the photo “correct.” Fix your exposure, create a solid foundation. On the second pass, we are adding our style and flair, the piece that makes it unmistakably yours.
On every trip, take a photo just for you
Not the safe photograph, nor the impressive photograph. The one you would still love even if nobody else saw it. No pressure, just the truth. (I typically share these in my YouTube videos!)
Work within constraints to find what you love
Maybe it is one focal length for a month, or a specific composition style that you want to improve. You can make it anything you want, but work within those constraints and find what repeatedly draws you in–this is where you lives.
The single best thing that I have done to give myself permission is this: I imagine that I am the only photographer in the world, and that any interpretation of what is before me is correct. To a degree, this is inherently true. I am the only photographer in the world who sees what is before me in the way only I can. Imagining a world without preconceived rules, restraints, or an overloaded “feed” of images takes the pressure off, and puts me in the driver’s seat.
What I have found over the years is that this feeling is never about boredom or lack of creativity; it is usually the real you begging to be set free. The goal is not to be impressive; it is to be unmistakable. Give yourself permission to create the work you want to create and do so with unrelenting forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness.
Because one day you will look back on your work and realize that it was you all along. It was always yours. And all the stress, all the heartache, all the conversations that you had with yourself that you told no one about… they all led to you.
God Bless.