What To Do When Someone Steals Your Style
Secondly, know that you have indeed arrived. You have achieved enough fame and recognition that someone likes you enough to copy your style. Be flattered, and then move on. Your heyday as king of the hill and master of your domain with regards to the way you were shooting something is over. Oh, you"ll probably still be the best, at least for a while. But it"s time to start thinking about the next great technique. Joggle your brain, test the limits, try new things and expand your horizons. Come up with something new, or new for you. Then master it. Don"t bother trying to take action against the upstart who stole your idea. Get over being upset. Any negative reactions will just waste your time and energy, and you know you already don"t have enough of either to go around. If you see that the person who is mimicking your style is doing a much better job at it than you did, take a few lessons from them and improve your technique. Otherwise, just keep doing what you do best and challenge yourself to find ways to improve. Don"t let a little competition derail your plans. Use it as a stepping stone to make improvements.Bear in mind that everyone has to start somewhere and someone studied your photographs enough to try to recreate what you did. While they may be copying your style at the moment, they are still in the process of learning who they are as a photographer. Chances are good that they will discover their own style as time goes on. If you think back, you may even remember a time early on when you looked at a photograph and said, ò€œI can do that. ò€œ Since imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, take a bow and be glad that youò€™re good enough to be copied. After you have raised the bar for yourself and reached new heights in your photographic career, you can thank the little imitator for forcing you out of your comfort zone and helping you broaden your horizons.
Remember Anne Geddes? Talk about someone who has been copied to death! Famous for her style of photographing infants and incorporating them into flowers or vegetables, she has been copied and imitated a million times over. But if you review her history, you will see that she simply grew and expanded as a photographer, and she remains an icon in the world of child portrait photographers.