What comes first...the vision or the photograph?

Hopefully another fun and insightful topic
When creating photos, what comes first for you....the vision in your mind or the photograph? IME, some people create the vision first and some create the vision afterwards.....where do you fall in the equation?

For me it's a bit of each

A bit of both for me as well. Sometimes there's a concept or pose I want to try and other times it's a bit of freelancing.

It's sometimes both for me, depending on the subject. Typically though, it is the vision first. I guess that is because whatever my project is gets rolled around in my brain for a few days first and by the time I'm ready to shoot, I have a creative "outline" in my head. I don't hold rigidly to it though, because shoots tend to take on a life of their own and I like to run with whatever is unfolding. Often, what I've IMAGINED in my head doesn't happen exactly as I planned it, but it is different and better.

Good photographers take photographs, great photographers make photographs.

Personally I think that, unless you are just standing with the shutter button pressed, there has to be some element of vision. Even in sports or street photography you look for an image before it arrives. In other genres where time isn't as pressing you might come up with an idea weeks or even months in advance. I know that when I started shooting I was just looking to copy what other people were doing. Now I find myself coming up with my own ideas and the list is growing fast.

Personally I tend to have an image in my head before I put my eye to the viewfinder. I try to have a strong idea of what I want it to look like, the question is how to transfer what is in my head into creative choices to get it onto the card. That involves the selection of exposure variables, tripod use, filters, flash, the use of reflectors, WB as well as a thought as to how I will process it when I get home.

That doesn't always work - occasionally I turn around and find something completely different to what I had thought.

The vision comes first or the camera doesn't come up into position.

jra wrote in post #15955433
Hopefully another fun and insightful topic
When creating photos, what comes first for you....the vision in your mind or the photograph? IME, some people create the vision first and some create the vision afterwards.....where do you fall in the equation?

If you are talking pre visualization and post visualization (west coast /east coast as it also known as) then both are legit and most of us are a combo of both.

Now vision is what photography and all visual art is about. Without vision their can be no art thus no artist.

Some words by some that kinda had it figured out.

"The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it." - Edward Weston

"The seeing eye is the important thing." - Imogen Cunningham

"It's just about seeing. You either see, or you don't see. The rest is academic." - Elliott Erwitt

"The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE." - Ernst Haas

"People always ask about cameras but it doesn't matter what camera you have. You can have the most modern camera in the world but if you don't have an eye, the camera is worthless." - Alfred Eisenstaedt

at the end of it all, there is nothing but the photograph.

ride5000 wrote in post #15956257
at the end of it all, there is nothing but the photograph.

Except for the photographer. He has a story.

when i first started out i used to stand and wait and let the picture come to me, now i go and get the picture.

Last night I went out for a drive, and found a place where the water was sooooo still it was like a mirror. As in, you could see star reflections in the water.
So I went for a bit of a drive around the perimeter to see what might look cool.

Found a spot where it had some cool reflections of the city.

After about 10 mins of mucking around, this train came roaring past on the far side of the water, casting a big reflection onto the water as it went past. I quickly jammed the camera down to some slightly more appropriate settings than ISO 100 30sec, and fired off a bunch of shots. One came out so-so, but it was the last train of the night by the looks. And I wasnt really that happy with what came out.

So, at some stage I plan to go back there on another still night, and be ready for when the train comes, and go a little earlier so I've got more than one chance and can try some different exposure times to see how the motion blur looks.

However if I never went anywhere unless I had a plan, there's probably considerably less chance I would have ever come across that location with those circumstances at the time the train came past.
So although I've got a plan for trying the same thing again, I certainly dont try to make a habit of it.
If I did, I wouldnt have been in the position to make the above plan in the first place.

romanv wrote in post #15964758
However if I never went anywhere unless I had a plan, there's probably considerably less chance I would have ever come across that location with those circumstances at the time the train came past.

This thread isn't really about generating a plan for a trip. It's "seeing" the photograph before you make it. You did just that when you saw the scene and the train. You apparently still have the vision of an image in your head that you want to make with a camera.

Aahh right, okay I get ya.

I just talk to some people who seem to come up with a highly specific plan for a photograph, and then they are constantly dissapointed because the weather conditions etc did not match what they had visualized in their mind.
Which, is likely similar to how the train scenario might eventuate... It might be foggy or rainy or whatever from now on for months to come, haha.
So I'm not going to dwell on it too much.

As per what you've said however, yeah I definitely do 'see' the pic in my mind before I take it 90% of the time.

But then theres this:

" 'Manufactured' or staged photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgment, it can only be on a psychological or sociological level. There are those who take photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover the image and seize it. For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which - in visual terms - questions and decides simultaneously. In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression."-Henri Cartier-Bresson

And this:
"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event, as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression."-Henri Cartier-Bresson