In his book The Camera, Ansel Adams says of the process he calls visualisation that “[i]t includes the ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure, so that the procedures employed will contribute to achieving the desired result.”

At the heart of my personal photographic journey is my desire to move towards the deliberate picture taking Ansel describes, whether the visualisation happens before I press the shutter, thus deciding my choice of camera, film type or app, or after, when I decide what type of digital processing to apply.  

How to go about this shift from the accidental to the deliberate?

Debra’s post from last week reminds me of the power of picking a project, of working on a photographic theme. This is not something I have done deliberately before; I’m on my third 365, but it’s always been non-thematic and most of all a tool to keep me shooting every day.

But when I look through my 365 sets, I notice what I like to call accidental series; themes that recur unplanned in my images. Here I find the key to moving forwards: clearly these series mean something to me, appeal to something in me I’m not consciously aware of, and the trick now will be to pick one and develop it deliberately.

I don’t know yet which series to pick, but maybe it will be one of these:

It may be particular type processing, like here a texture overlay by Bocaccino together with a black and white conversion:
texture

Or a specific subject, such as something as simple as empty chairs:
chairs

Or the same place, in diffent light, different seasons and using different processing:
place

Do you have any plans to develop your photography? Please let us know in the comments!

All the best from Jenny.