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Ansel Adams talked about pre-visualisation as the foundation of his photographic method. He could see the final print before making the exposure, knowing exactly what the image would look like after development and printing. Not just approximately but precisely. The vision came first, complete and detailed, and the technical process existed to manifest that internal image in physical form.

If you can do that, if you can see the finished photograph in your mind before you press the shutter, your entire approach to photography centres on capturing that vision. You’re trying to match what you see in your head with what the camera records. The image exists first internally, then you make it real through technical execution. Vision precedes and guides craft.

Most people assume everyone thinks the same way they do. They imagine that when you say “picture this in your mind,” everyone experiences roughly the same thing. When you say “think about it,” everyone has the same internal process. But cognitive variation is enormous, and these differences fundamentally change how you approach photography.

On my way back from Lyon recently, I experimented with trying to convey meaning over prettiness.

Out of cycle post. This is something I’ve been noticing and I’ve been trying to articulate for a while. I’m not sure it’s completely clear in my head yet, but here goes nothing.

When I started writing on Substack, I was already moving away from pretty pictures. I’d been getting interested in people more than landscapes, in human presence more than nice light falling across empty scenery. But I hadn’t yet articulated why that shift was happening or where it might lead.

In today’s near infinite storage space, it’s easy to lose track of the photos you take. You stop seeing any of them because there are so many of them. They become wallpaper, a continuous scroll of undifferentiated moments that mean nothing precisely because they were supposed to mean everything.

I have cameras I haven’t touched in months. In fact I have cameras I’ve never used. They sit on a shelf, visible every time I walk past. Some moralists would tell me to sell them. To clear the clutter, to free the mind. Be honest about your actual practice. Stop kidding yourself.

They’re plain wrong because they’re looking at it from the wrong angle.

Photography sells itself as preservation. We take pictures to capture moments, to remember what happened, to hold onto people and places before they disappear. The promise is that the image will keep the past accessible, faithful, ready to consult whenever memory fails us.

That’s not what actually occurs. What happens instead is more complicated and more interesting. Photographs don’t preserve experience. They create scaffolding for reconstruction, and nostalgia is the primary material we use to build with.