Pre-planning versus “hunting” for images

In my possibly warped mind, there are two basic ways of doing photography: 1) You have the finished image in your mind and you go about putting the elements together to create what you have already visualized, or 2) You walk around “looking” for things that catch your eye–you “hunt” for images…you “discover” them. (Now, I suppose there may be a gray zone in between…and some “discovery” may also occur as you review and post-process images that started out as in #1–so I guess it may not be as clear cut as my two options…but you get the idea.)

What prompted this thought was my look at Joel-Peter Witkin’s work and the resultant blog post yesterday. It seems to me his photography (very fantastic, bizzaro stuff!) is all about having the idea beforehand (#1), then selecting the elements needed to make it a reality in the final print. Of course, as he sets up, there is very likely some “discovery” as he prepares the shoot but, in the main, it is photography based on an idea that is already in the artist’s mind.

Then there is Ansel with his “previsualization” (a redundant word, by the way). But I think this is very different from what Witkin does. I think AA went about “hunting” for images (#2 above), and when something caught his eye, THAT is when the pre-visualization kicked in–he would then visualize it as it would appear in the final print. Or, he would have enough understanding of a place and the lighting during the day and the seasons, that he could attempt to get his pre-visualized image by going there at the right time–but this to me still falls in the #2 camp of “hunting” for images. (Then there is Henri Cartier-Bresson, who might be called the ultimate “hunter” in the genre of street photography.)

Personally, I tend to do a lot more of #2 and very little of #1. As I frame an image, though, I do tend to start thinking about how it might look as a final print…but my basic initial approach is to “hunt”, not to set up scenes in the studio or elsewhere. Even when I do a bit of pre-planning for a sunrise landscape shot with a certain moon phase, I still feel like I am out there “hunting” (see today’s image as an example). I don’t think one way is inherently superior to the other…I think it just says something about how the artist’s mind works. Great images can come out of either method.

So, what do you do? How do you think about your creative process? Why do you work the way you do? If you always work as in #2, have you ever experimented with process #1?

Hmmm…points to ponder!