What My Neon Light Photos Say About Me

This is something I've noticed about my own photography.

I've been fascinated by neon lights in Hong Kong for years. But since I can't get there often, I started looking for neon lights closer to home. Luckily, I live close to New York, and there's no shortage of neon there either. The fascination runs deep enough that I now seek out neon wherever I travel — I stopped in a small town in Japan recently and, almost by instinct, found myself photographing its neon signs too.

The Problem With Repetition

When I sat down to process those photos later, I noticed something odd: some of them had nearly identical compositions to shots I'd taken in other cities. Normally that wouldn't bother me. But these were similar enough that I started wondering — will I even be able to tell where each photo was taken, just by looking at it?

I can see how it happened. When I'm traveling, I don't have the luxury of lingering over a scene. I spot something interesting, settle on a couple of compositions, take the shots, and move on — the whole process rarely takes more than ten minutes. Under that kind of time pressure, I naturally fall back on a handful of tried-and-true compositions. That's likely why the photos start to look alike from one city to the next.

Is Repetition the Same as Style?

I think I've succeeded, at least, in avoiding the run-of-the-mill tourist shot. But does that make this a personal style? Honestly, I can't tell — to me, none of these compositions feel especially unique.

So here's the question I keep coming back to: if I gathered all these neon photos into one collection, what would they say about me?

I think I need to actually put that collection together to find out.