As a photographer you want to make the best possible photographs, so you take into account a variety of factors before you click the picture. You think about the lighting, you check for background distractions, you note the contrast, and you suggest favorable poses. It takes a bit of time and planning and discussion to get everything just right. That is perhaps a normal way to work a scene or a photo session, and the rewards for your efforts are, hopefully, pleasing photographs.

But for those of us that like to keep things under our control — plan out our shoots in detail, work out the lighting details, design the elements in our frames, etc — it is good, once in a while, to not worry about the details and simply go out and take photos. Instead of worrying about composition, for instance, simply take the photo. Take many photos. Trust your muse. Do it on faith.

Maybe we get in the way of our great photographs. Maybe we need to be absent.

As can be expected from such a photo session, you will find most of the photos lacking in appeal and destined for the delete bin. But you will find too in that digital stash one or two gems, ones in which all the elements have fallen in place and everything — the lighting, the composition, the background — is exactly how you would have wanted them to be had you designed the photograph yourself! I realize it’s hard to believe such things can happen but if my experience is any proof, such things do happen. You don’t want this to become your modus operandi for creative output, of course, but it helps to know that sometimes when it feels like you are not winning, you still might be.

There have been several occasions when I have not felt inspired and yet continued to take photos and I discovered, much to my amazement that, even with me absent, there were a few beauties, stuff I could not have made had I tried hard! Maybe we get in the way of our great photographs. Maybe we need to be absent. I don’t know but while I search for answers all I can say is, “Sometimes you just get lucky!”