"Chance favours the prepared mind", so said Louis Pasteur – though photographer Ansel Adams is sometimes misattributed as the author of this pithy phrase. The question for me is what kind of preparation is appropriate to the making of landscape photographs? Many take preparation to mean in-depth planning in one form or another; the setting of objectives (the prior choice of location and viewpoint) and strategies for achieving those objectives (time of day, time of year, kind of light, choice of lens, choice of film, choice of socks and so on). A photographer I know, who was also an ex-member of the British Army, often quoted the "Seven P's" rule as an essential prerequisite for making a good image: Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance!
This is all well and good when trying to make sure that you have your tanks and men in the right place prior to a battle but does it really apply to photography? OK, some basic planning is necessary – but it is so basic that it only qualifies as planning in the same way that breathing qualifies as essential planning for life:
1) You need to make sure that you have the camera with you (despite Jacques Henri Lartigue's deepest wish, blinking three times is not sufficient when one wishes to freeze a moment for posterity)
2) A tripod is almost always a good idea (and I should know as I have had the dreadful experience of not realising that I have forgotten mine until I'd reached the summit of a lonely hill...)
and...
3) One needs a medium, be it film or a memory card, on which to inscribe the image.
Other than make sure that these three essential details are in place (I know, I forgot the tripod once and you're never going to let me forget it!) I do very little in the way of planning – one might say (in a derogatory way) that this is apparent in my photographs. And actually I hope my lack of planning is apparent, but as a positive rather than negative attribute.
Photographers fall into two camps (perhaps all humans do – after all sweeping generalisations are always good!): those who plan and those who don't; those who feel uneasy without a specific goal and those who feel that that the lack of a goal frees their creativity. I place myself in the latter group. When I travel out to make a photograph I do so without a specific goal in mind. I usually have a place in mind (silly not to or one might find oneself in the car park at Sainsbury's supermarket) but I rarely have any clear idea about what I'm going to make an image of when I get there. I travel in a receptive mood but not one of expectation.
There are a couple of benefits to this laissez faire attitude – and at least one downside too! I'll deal with this first. I can think of quite a few images that have definitely benefited from a good deal of planning, especially ones when the light only strikes your subject at a particular time of year or ones that rely upon a particular state of the tide. One could, of course, happen upon these circumstances and still make an outstanding image. In fact I'm fairly certain that one of my favourite images of Joe Cornish's, Contours in Blue, was achieved by luck, by happenstance, despite the window of opportunity for its making being almost impossible narrow. This image can only be made around sunset, between mid December and mid January when the tide is more than half way out. Given the vagaries of the British weather this probably means there are probably less than half a dozen days in a year when the image might be made.
But part of the discipline of making images on a large format camera is that you are forced to anticipate events. Once this attitude is imprinted it's difficult to switch it off. Everywhere you go you will look at things and wonder whether it would look better at a different time of the day or year or if the sky was different or if it was raining or if it was snowing... This attitude, of course, provides a useful quality control check: is this the best image that I can make here or should I come back another day?
So, travelling without planning would seem to be at worst counter-productive and at best not making the optimum use of one's time.
However, as I've already stated, I don't plan image making like a military campaign and I still manage to make images. In fact I've become increasingly aware that to plan too much can actually be bad for one's pictures. The first problem with being too focussed on a specific target is that one can dismiss other opportunities (or simply not see them at all). There have been many occasions when I have seen something that I thought would make a great image and walked past it because I had another in mind only to find that when I reached my goal the light was poor or some other factor made the proposed image unworkable.
I've now grown to realise that I should seize the first opportunity presented to me. Of course all of you using cameras other than a view camera will be muttering under you breath, "Why not make both?!" This might indeed be possible (even on a 5X4) in some circumstances. But why rush to make two? Better to take your time and make one image well. The light, or other transient factors, might force you to hurry but other than the pressure from those external variants I feel one should never place time constraints on one's work. Do you think that Michelangelo would have 'delivered' the Sistine Chapel a week earlier just because he wanted to move onto another commission? No! He worked until he was satisfied with the result.
The other great benefit of not planning a particular image is that one becomes more spontaneous. Wandering with a receptive mind makes one open to new and different opportunities from one's normal repertoire. Planning can make one stick to tried and tested methods of achieving a satisfying result; using warm light, using a wide angle lens, using a familiar composition and so on. I'm also, as I think I've written in previous posts, a fan of anonymous places. An image such as Blue Snow is a good example of one made in just such a place and one that simply could not have been planned.
It seems to me that the most important "forces" photographers have to muster are garrisoned inside our heads, and that we carry them with us always. All we have to do is rouse them from their barracks, placing them in a state of readiness and alerting them to the possibility of some creative action. The one essential preparation that we always need to carry out is to make ourselves receptive to new possibilities for images. Rather than Pasteur's famous phrase, it might be better for photographer's to say, "The prepared mind finds possibilities in chance."
