Nothing could be easier than taking a photograph. Press the shutter and voila. Not so long ago, when people where using film, you could be sure of how well the photograph was only after processing the film. Today, digital cameras provide instant gratification. So many of us who have gotten lazy have started to think after shooting rather than think before shooting.
That brings us to the topic of this article: how pre-visualization creates better photographs. Pre-visualization is the act of looking at a scene and imagining what the image will look like in its final format (e.g., in a print) and all of the steps that will be needed to get there. Pre-visualization drives how the image is shot and processed from the time the shutter is pressed until the time the image is finalized.
Pre-visualization forces a photographer to slow down and think through the entire process of producing the final image. Taking time is critical since the desired image, and the way that it must be processed to meet that end, determine the best way for the image to be shot. Personally, I tend to experience my pre-visualization fix when I spontaneously connect to the scene at an emotional level.
After recovering from the emotional connection, my mind breaks the scene down into the technical aspects of photography (light, contrast, color and so on) – just so I am able to get what I want and discard what I do not and think what I will do after coming back with the shot.
It was a very clear and very bright morning at the White Sands National Monument. The light was already kind of flat, yet something so mundane as a restroom in the middle of the desert pushed some buttons inside me. I could exactly see what I wanted to see. The photograph in its original form is nothing like it – it was pretty much white all over. This was shot in black and white film, so in the I printed dark by burning in and at the same time dodging the foreground to reveal the tire tracks and and to create the halo behind the restroom.
I did not stumble upon this idea after the fact. The result and all the steps that would be needed were clear in my mind before the shot
