Which Comes First? The Vision or the Location?

I have been asked this question so many times over the years and I still find it one of the most interesting things to think about. Do you go somewhere with a picture already formed in your mind, or do you arrive open and let the place tell you what it wants to say?

Honestly, I think the question itself is a little misleading. It suggests that vision and location are separate things, that one has to come before the other. But in my experience they are always in conversation with each other, and neither one is really in charge.

I have stood on the same stretch of Dorset shoreline more times than I can count and walked away with nothing. Not because the place had nothing to offer, but because I wasn't ready for it. Then on another morning, perhaps a grey one with nothing obviously promising about it, something would catch and I would know immediately that this was the moment I had been waiting for without realising I was waiting.

When I went to Hokkaido in 2020 I made a conscious decision not to plan. I didn't want to arrive with a list of shots. I wanted to be genuinely surprised by the place, and I was. What struck me most wasn't the drama of the landscape but the quality of its silence. It was a silence that asked something of me. It slowed me down. And in that slowing down the images began to find me rather than the other way around.

So if I had to answer honestly I would say the vision comes first, but not as a fixed idea. More as a state of readiness. A willingness to be moved. The location then gives that readiness somewhere to land.

I think the photographers I admire most all share this quality of openness. They go to a place not to execute a plan but to have an encounter. And that encounter, when it happens, is what makes the difference between a competent photograph and something that genuinely stays with you.

What is your experience? Do you find yourself planning your shots in advance or do you prefer to arrive without expectations and see what unfolds?