Why One Photographer Stopped Chasing the Perfect Shot After 17 Years

Most photographers plan every trip down to the parking spot, the light, and the exact viewpoint. There is another way to work, one that starts with knowing nothing about what you'll shoot when you leave the house.

Craig Roberts walks through the shift on the e6 Vlogs channel, describing a move away from the travel and landscape work he did between 1997 and 2014. Back then, he researched maps, scouted viewpoints, checked weather, and made sure he got the shot so he could sell it to magazines, calendars, and photo libraries, most of which no longer exist. He calls that the typical approach, and he's clear that it works. What changed is that he stopped wanting to shoot the honeypot views everyone already photographs.

The turning point came partly through gear. Roberts used larger cameras that demanded a tripod, and hand holding wasn't an option. As image stabilization improved, he let go of the tripod entirely and describes the result as "less static and more fluid." That freed him to shoot subjects other photographers seem to ignore, an approach he sums up as "less pretty, more gritty." It began with wind turbines and grew from there, none of it planned. He's careful to say the tripod taught him things that never showed up on a spec sheet, and he kept those lessons even after setting the tripod down.

The idea worth sitting with here is that constraints early in a career build the instincts you rely on later. Roberts spent years perfecting the fundamentals on subjects with clear rules: the right light, the right position, the shot the client expected. That discipline is exactly what lets him improvise now, walking out with no preconceived idea and slowing down to compose a scene nobody has bothered to photograph. This tracks with a broader movement in photography away from chasing the same overshot locations that flood social media, toward personal projects and overlooked subjects. If you feel boxed in by the checklist of famous viewpoints, the practical takeaway is that mastering the "boring" work first gives you the freedom to abandon the rules on purpose, rather than by accident. A "found photo," as he puts it, carries no comparisons and no preconceptions, which means the result belongs to you alone.

Roberts connects the concept to the "found poem," where a poem is built from non-poetic sources like news articles or social media comments, and he points to comedian Dave Gorman for modern examples. The difference, he notes, is that a found poem borrows its raw material from somewhere, while a found photo hands you nothing. You supply the vision, the skill, the open mind, and the appreciation of light, color, shape, and form for a subject most people would walk past. He also runs workshops built around this exact process, where he encourages you to find the image yourself rather than being led to a pretty view and left alone, working through the settings together in the field.

Give the video above a watch to hear how Roberts decides whether a found photo has actually succeeded.