End Game

For those of us that lean toward the "Creating Images" philosophy and do it more for personal satisfaction than monetary gain...do you know up front the direction that you will take an image?
As an example...a recent local excursion produced several images like this...don't ask what he was doing.

Now, this is just my opinion, but personally, I don't think that this is the best process. Now, that's not to say that occasionally while going through my photos I don't have an "aha" moment or decide halfway through the editing process that I want to go a completely different direction than I'd originally intended. That said, if you just go out and start shooting without a definite gameplan, you're relying almost entirely on luck to get even the raw material you need to make a compelling image. So, more times than not, I know exactly what I'm looking for. Now, in landscape photography, for instance, nature doesn't always cooperate, so I do have to remain flexible. But even if it wasn't my original plan, I do already have a plan for the final image before I ever press the photo button. If I didn't, I can only imagine I'd be in a state of constant frustration because I didn't capture the right angle or exposure or whatever I needed to make the image that I didn't decide I wanted until after I was done shooting.

But I do often write not knowing where my story will end, so who knows, this methodology may work for some in photography as well.

I actually have the opposite approach, I usually go out and just look for interesting subjects. Sometimes in post-production the images I end up creating pan out much differently than I imagined, but for the most part I don't go out and shoot with something definitive in mind.

That said, I do sometimes go out with a thought like "it would be cool if I could get a picture of a hummingbird at a flower using a quick shutter speed", but I find that if I fixate too long on trying to get one image, I end up missing out on a lot. Also, if I'm on vacation or something I try to take some images that I can use to tell the story of my vacation, but once I have those, I just wander around and look for interesting subjects.

I'm not saying my strategy is better or worse or anything - it's just how I like to shoot.

Hmm, it varies.

When I'm doing "creative" photography, at least half the time I already have the end vision in my head well before the shoot even starts. Out of the remaining, it's about an even split: I get additional inspiration at the time of the shoot, and shoot towards those new/added goals; or, I shoot with the expectation that I'll be able to do something with it in processing, as in the original post.

If it's a person or subject matter that I'm familiar with or personally enthusiastic about, it's more likely that I'll have a complete plan in advance. The less enthusiastic I am about the subject matter, the more likely I'll have to fumble around with it later to make something I'm happy with.

I found an interesting article about pre-visualization (there are a ton out there, I'm sure).

http://www.ronbigelow.​com …tion/previsuali​zation.htm

What struck me about the example the author talked about is that he would no doubt have left well before his shot ever appeared if he didn't know what he wanted before he ever set up his camera. My technique isn't quite the same (though I'm probably going to start thinking more about the presentation medium in the future), but I've had similar experiences to what this author talked about. There was a good photograph in front of me, but I waited for the conditions I knew would make a great photograph. Now, with nature, there are many times I've packed up without taking a single photograph because those conditions never came about, but it was with the thought that there's always tomorrow (or next week, next month, etc.), and with enough persistence, it's almost always worth the wait.