It's only natural that when one becomes determined to better understand and practice any creative art — music, painting, photography – the first steps inevitably involve trying to emulate the professional results one admires.
I see this a lot when I look online at photographers offerings. On the one hand, it's encouraging and entertaining to see the evolution of vision as the photographer becomes ever more adept at using the available tools to yield the perfect image.
The flip side of this determination, however, is that the photographer never finds a way to make the vision meaningful — the results continue to be about duplicating a pre-conceived ideal scene — for example a snow-capped mountain and it's reflection in a foreground lake: though lovely, it's really more of a technical achievement than a creative one.
As artist Chuck Close observed, of all the creative arts, photography is the easiest one to master and the hardest one in which to find one's unique voice. I came across this quote that I think is an apt description of the mind set one must cultivate in order to transcend the cliches and find one's personal vision:
Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.
Haruki Murakami