So often people ask professional photographers questions like “how are your pictures better than mine?” Sometimes they have better gear than the pros, and really wonder. My belief lately is it is all about the power of pre-visualization. Not in some sort of hippy, vision question way, but in the practical planning way.

Years ago I took a photography class from a gentleman by the name of Ken Pugh who talked about some of his wildlife photography. He didn’t show up at Manning Park and get great shots, he imagined the type of shot he wanted to get (say a bear catching a salmon) then he researched and planned to find out the best location, time of year, and other factors that led to him getting the sorts of shots he imagined.

To illustrate a bit more, let’s take a look at two different scenarios quickly.

First Scenario – The Everyman

You’ve got your camera and are going somewhere nice, say the gorgeous Cannon Beach in Oregonrder=popularity). You get there, spend the night in the hotel, wake up, find a nice little cafe for breakfast, and head out for a walk on the beach in the noon sun. Gorgeous blue sky, waves crashing, outcroppings of rocks, what a great picture. You put the camera to your eye, compose the rocks, sky, and sea and take the shot, then a few more. Maybe you change the camera settings from “P” to “Landscape” mode too, and play with the settings.

After you get a chance to look at the shots later they are… ok. Kinda flat, drab, somehow missing the “feel” of how it felt when you were there. They do show what was there but why aren’t they like the ones you saw in the travel brochures?

This I think describes a fair chunk of photographers out there who are on the cusp of moving from decent to great.

Second Scenario – Man With A Plan

Same trip, different plan. This time you pre-visualize the image you want before you show up on the beach.

You have it in your head that you want the sunset lighting up the sky with purple flares, you want the water to be still and the pillars of rock mirrored on the ground. The light should be kissing the edges of the rock just enough to give them detail but not enough to detract from the sun. There needs to be a foreground object, maybe a small rock to give a bit of visual interest to draw the viewer in. The scene should be in focus from foreground to background.

So how do you go about getting this, now you have it in your head?

Pre-Trip Planning

First there’s the pre-trip stuff. You need to find out what season the sky looks good with great clouds but no rain. There’s no guarantee of a sunset but it helps. You probably will need to pre-scout too to see how the light and angles look, maybe not in person but you can research times for sunset and sunrise, and look at some examples online. Make sure you have the right lenses, your batteries are charged, etc.

Mission on the Ground

Now you’re at the beach, you’ve had your bagel, coffee (it’s not Tim Horton’s so you can’t really call it “coffee”, but it’ll do for now), what next? Well, maybe you wander around the beach till you find an angle that suits the shot you want. You wanted to accentuate the beach, so you know you’ll need a wide angle lens and to get low, so you’ll have to make sure that you have a position that lets you go low and wide without getting the bagel shop in the background. Evening shooting means low light so you had better bring a tripod.

To get that lighting that’s kissing the rocks you have to have just the right angle and know where on the horizon the sun is going to be, so better find out that too. Luckily there are tools like The Photographers Ephemeris to figure it out. You have to get the angles right or else the rocks will just be big black blobs, and while that could look cool, the pre-visualize, the intention is to have them being kissed on the edges by the sun, so you better find the right angle (or have a spot where you can move fast as the sun goes down to get a few different angles. Lastly you know you want that foreground object so you have to find it (or get a rock and drop it where you want it to be).

When the time comes you are setup as the sun nears the horizon, the purple skies blaze, you already have your camera settings set to capture maximum depth of field and click, you fire a single frame and walk away knowing that what you got was exactly what you imagined in your mind’s eye.

Ok, some of the stuff might be going a bit far fetched (especially the single shot part), but hopefully you got the idea I am going for, that is if you know what you want when you go out you’re going to have a much easier time of getting it.

This works for photography, this works if you’re a model this works if you’re a makeup artist and this works for sports, cooking, programming and everything from pitching a company identity refresh to a new client to having a great first day as a manager in a small company.

I don’t want to get all holistic on you, and I won’t get into the “to think is to create” stuff, but for photography and artistic endeavours in general you have to know that going in with a plan, even a partial plan, is way better than not going in with any. That’s a recipe for disappointment when you get back and think the result is either crap of “meh”. Think of the makeup artist starting work on a model but not knowing what the final result she wanted. Now think of the same thing but the makeup artist goes in knowing exactly what she wants.

A quick story and image before I leave you. The shot below was essentially pre-visualized before I snapped the shutter. I had a great model with awesome eye makeup, and I knew that I wanted just her eyes in focus and her face angled away. I had to set up the lights to give me the right amount of output for a shallow depth of field, I had to use the right lens and get the model positioned with the right expression and closed eyes. In the end (and I hate to admit that it even came as a bit of a shock to me) the shot was pretty much exactly what I had imagined it would be. You can debate whether it’s a good image or not, but the fact is it’s what I had in my head and chances are I wouldn’t have gotten it if I’d just been stumbling around and experimenting (not that there’s not merit to that as well 🙂