Before the Shutter, or After — On Two Kinds of Photography

Do you think before you press the shutter — or does the thinking only begin after?

I believe these are photography's two modes: think first, then shoot — or shoot first, then think.

To think first and shoot second is to create with plan and purpose. Before the shutter is ever pressed, the essence and intent of the expression already exist. The photographer's feeling for the world has been distilled into something directed and narrow — the photograph merely externalizes what has already taken shape within. As Ansel Adams put it: "You don't take a photograph, you make it." Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson push this mode to its extreme: sets built, lights rigged, figures placed — everything is finished before the exposure, and the shutter is only the final confirmation. This is the presentation of an inner world.

To shoot first and think second is a mode where instinct takes precedence. It belongs to a private moment — going where circumstance leads, moving with the rhythm of the world. The shutter comes before understanding; meaning surfaces only afterward. It is not self-expression but a way of examining the world, of asking it questions. Garry Winogrand gave this mode its perfect footnote: "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed." Daido Moriyama went further still — shooting without even looking through the viewfinder, trusting the body's instinct, leaving meaning to be found later in the darkroom and the edit.

This division is not my invention. In Mirrors and Windows, the 1978 exhibition John Szarkowski curated for MoMA, he split photography into mirrors and windows: the mirror turns inward, photography as self-expression; the window turns outward, photography as a means of exploring the world. Photography that thinks first is a mirror; photography that shoots first is a window.

Honestly, though, this is a spectrum, not two opposing poles. Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment" looks like pure instinct, but it was reflex forged from decades of geometric training; and for intuitive shooters like Winogrand, thinking never disappeared — it simply moved to the editing stage, after the shutter. The more precise claim is this: the difference between the two modes is not whether thinking happens, but whether it happens before the shutter, or after.

Not long ago, while shooting food at a restaurant, I noticed through the window two little girls watching me work. No thinking, no plan — I simply pressed the shutter. First one peeked from behind the tulips; then the two of them gave up hiding and smiled into the frame together. The photographs existed before the idea did, and every bit of meaning surfaced afterward: that they had been watching me, the instant of being caught, a complete little narrative. In that moment I understood — the world set the rhythm, and I simply kept up.