Recognition before influence

PHOTOSNACK #714

Here is my Sunday thought.

I keep thinking about this question, and it gets deeper the more I sit with it. We often talk about the photographer who “influences” us the most — the one we admire and feel connected to. But many of us choose this person after we’ve already been photographing for years. After our habits, preferences, and instincts have already taken shape.

When we finally discover their work, the feeling is not I want to start doing this.
It’s I’ve been moving this way already.

Long before we can explain our choices, something inside us is already guiding us: how close we get to subjects, what kind of light feels honest, what moments we feel are worth holding onto. These are not usually learned at first — they come from intuition. The understanding comes later.

Then we encounter a photographer whose work feels like a mirror to those instincts. Someone who puts into clear form something we have been trying to express. And we think: Yes. This is the direction I have been following all along.

So maybe influence is not what starts our style.
Maybe it is what helps us recognize our style.

And of course, none of us works in isolation. We all look at photographs made by others. The photographers we admire did the same — they were looking, responding, borrowing, refining. Photography has always been a long, shared conversation, passing through generations. One idea leads to another. One person opens a door that someone else continues walking through.

But even within this shared continuum, something personal remains.
The instinct comes first.
The inspiration we name later simply helps us understand and trust it.

We don’t necessarily become like the photographers we admire.
We recognize something of ourselves in them — and that recognition encourages us to keep going.

Until next time,
Tomasz