by Tamra Heathershaw-Hart

Created on: November 06, 2009

Whether you're a professional photographer or just a "for fun" casual photographer, everyone eventually gets bitten by the desire to develop some type of personal style. We can often recognize a style with one glance - think of how easy it is to recognize an image by Ansel Adams, Jill Greenberg, or Anne Geddes. The artist in all of us at some point feels the urge to figure out what it is that really "sings" to us about creating photographic images.

One thing that might help you in your search for your personal style is to create a "mood board." Mood boards are defined by Wikipedia as "a type of poster design that may consist of images, text, and samples of objects" and "may be used as a frame of reference during the design process in a variety of abstract disciplines." Mood boards are used in a variety of industries including graphic design, advertising, fashion, and video game design. And since it's not a verbal or written method it's a great tool for visually-oriented folks who are having problems finding the right words to describe what they're thinking about their style.

To create the board start by getting a large piece of posterboard or foam core so you have a good sized surface to work on. Then start going through all your magazines (house, garden, bridal, craft, and so on) and catalogs and look for things that appeal to you - not just photographs but colors, patterns, textures. Ignore any technical issues with the images; you're not doing a critique here. What you're trying to find isn't "I'd wear this" or "I wish my living room was like that" images but rather stuff that gets an inner "ooooh" out of you even if it's not your normal clothing or home style. (In other words, if you see a heavily-ruffled wedding dress photo and go "ooooh" but would never be caught dead wearing something like that, that's still a perfect image for your mood board.)

Cut out the images that appeal and start sticking them on the backing. Use the removable (post-it type) glue stick so you have the freedom to move things around. Take your time filling it the board up, and then don't look at it for at least 24 hours. At that point, remove the things where you say "what was I thinking?" or "nope, not quite me" and look for replacements. Move things around a bit more and look for places where things contrast with each other (lace and leather, big and small, dark and bright), and also where they're similar.

When you're done, you should see patterns. Maybe it's in the colors, or the

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