Not every successful photographer has a single "look" for all of the photos they publish. Others do.

It all depends on what you want to get out of it.

If you're looking for popularity on social media, then you probably should try to narrow your focus a little. Eventually.

If you're more interested in pleasing yourself and discovering where photography might one day take you, then experimenting with a wide variety of subjects, styles, and shooting situations is a good way to help you eventually discover your own voice instead of trying to choose who's style to imitate.

And don't forget to study the history of photography and some of its most celebrated practitioners, in addition to the most followed people on Instagram and 500px.

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Two of my heroes:

Neil Leifer and Walter Iooss that are most well known for the work they did covering marquee sports events for Sports Illustrated also had periods in their careers when they covered a wide range of other subjects, many in styles very different from their sports reportage for SI.

Iooss ranged from popular music when he photographed James Brown, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix among others while working as a staff photographer for Atlantic Records between 1968 and 1972 to ad campaigns for Camel cigarettes in the 1980s. He did a large number of fashion shoots for the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue long after he left his staff position that he held at SI from 1972 to 1982 in order to shoot a two and one-half year project for Fujifilm.

At 16 years old Leifer sold his first photographs to Sports Illustrated when he captured several frames of the winning touchdown in overtime of the 1958 NFL Championship Game. He had his first SI cover at age 19. As a young junior staff photographer at SI, he staged one-pop flashes in the rafters so he could use color slide film that was slower than the "fast" but grainy B&W film that others were using and took a photo of Muhammed Ali standing over Sonny Liston in 1965 that many consider the "greatest sports photograph of all time." (That's his boss we can see between Ali's legs helplessly looking at The Champ's backside.) After he left SI in 1978 he went to work at Time magazine where he had over 40 covers. They included President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush, Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, National Rifle Association President Joe Foss, the Statue of Liberty's 100th birthday celebration, actors Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood, Pope John Paul II's visit to America, Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson, New York City Mayor Ed Koch, The Space Shuttle Columbia, President Jimmy Carter, The Animals of Africa, Olympian Carl Lewis, and actor Paul Newman.