Do you scout out locations before you shoot them or do you just photograph as you happen upon them? This helpful video explores why visiting locations before you shoot them can benefit your landscape work.
Coming to you from Michael Breitung, this great video examines the importance of location-scouting in landscape photography. I think the problem is that with landscape work, you're often chasing light and time windows while having to cover major distances on foot. This creates a sort of mathematical game of expected value in which you're constantly trying to evaluate the time and light left vs. the probability of finding a better location, which predisposes one to stopping to shoot when there's a decent chance that there's a better spot or the location will eventually have better light. This is where location-scouting becomes so beneficial: it allows you to know exactly where to head to and to watch the forecast, moon phase, etc. to plan the exact shot you'd like in the best conditions, divorcing the planning of a photo from the act of shooting it. I look back at my portfolio occasionally, and I can definitely say that my best landscape image were the ones I planned in advance.
Taken on the run = "snapshot".
Planned = (hopefully) "photograph".
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I don't think it's that black and white. I think the point is more maximizing your chances of getting the exact shot you want.
Perhaps not - but planning is much more reliable than leaving it to chance. Eg - what gear do you need? What's the lighting like? Where should I stand? Chance answers none of those questions.
Granted there are shots one can take without planning - but are they as good as they could have been, with more thought?
I took one a couple of weeks ago, and to my shame it was my wife (a complete amateur, who shoots with either her cellphone or an ancient Olympus pocket job) who steered me to the right spot to take the shote - the ONLY spot on the planet where that particular shot COULD me made correctly.
And only yesterday I ran off a print of a shot I took several months ago, which is just "not quite" what I wanted. And the movement of the planets being what it is, I now have to wait almost 12 months to get exactly the right lighting. Taken without planning, I'm afraid it's merely an "almost - but not quite".
Totally agree. Most of the shots I look back on in my portfolio that are good but not particularly compelling were chance shots that were "almost but not quite," as you put it.