where you see a new precedent forming, ask yourself, Am I
looking at a habit or a trend? This is an important question
because many times photographers, in their quest to be com-
petitive, jump hastily when, for instance, a new style of imagery
seems to be popular, only to see a different trend take its place
as soon as they are finished developing their new look.
If you are old enough to have been shooting in the
eighties, surely you will remember Aaron Jones’s light-painting
techniques. If not, trust me, Jones’s lovely way to paint with
light took off incredibly quickly, with many shooters taking
workshops and buying expensive equipment to create their
own versions of a light-painting image only to see the trend
become overdone and simply over within a two-year span.
Before we go much further, let’s define the difference between
a trend and a habit, as defined in my computer’s dictionary.Trend: a general tendency, movement, or direction.
A current fashion or mode.
Habit: An action or behavior pattern that is regular,
repetitive, and often unconscious.Clearly, there is a difference between a trend and a
habit, but often the difference is extremely subtle. In addition,
a habit, which might have started as a trend, does not always
hold. Habits also change, based on a variety of factors.
Light painting, cross processing, and Polaroid transfers are
a few visual trends that have come and gone, never staying
around long enough to become a convention.
However, other visual trends, like the use of black-and-white
photography in advertising (after years of being a mostly color-
oriented industry) and documentary style for annual reports
and use by nonprofits, seem to be fixed into our creative
culture.FOLLOW THE FAD?The use of lifestyle imagery is the latest change that started
as a trend but seems to be here to stay. When I started as a
rep thirty-odd years ago, very few photographers (with thePART4 / TOOLSChapter 17.qxd 6/25/07 7:21 AM Page 104