There are two sides to making art photographs. Form and Content. (Actually there is a third, Impact, which considers how you viewer will connect with you through the photograph, but we'll get to that later...)
The important thing for this conversation is that form, the physical aspects of the photographic work, has to support the content, the meaning behind the work. If the two are disconnected then the photo makes no real sense. If the photo is just about form then it is restricted to the physical domain and is only about decoration. If the content of the photograph is not clear to the photographer, how can any viewer understand the intention?
Content is archived through research. On the most basic level, research can be going out into the world and shooting whenever you are drawn to. Eventually however, you need to come to some conclusion about what things are drawing your attention. This is essentially a snapshot of your brain and emotions connecting through your eye, all working in harmony. [It is a matter of using your ‘third eye’, where the body is acting intuitively but you mind is still watching carefully yet without interfering. This is the essence of improvisation. The goal is to connect you heart to your hand without your head getting in the way, but still having the cognizance to know what is happening so it can be repeated at a later date.]
After making this discovery, you start going out to specifically shoot those things in which you are interested. This is a transformation from a gatherer to a hunter (to borrow vocabulary from the anthropologists who use these together). It can also be expressed as the difference between intuitive shooting and disciplined or directed shooting.
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