What's the opposite of Inadvertent?

I'd like to muse for a moment, on the opposite of the inadvertent shot. This is the kind of shot where you walk around, look for interesting angles, maybe set up your tripod, look through the view finder, adjust as necessary, until you're finally happy with the composition... And it goes on, deciding on whether you need a small aperture for a large depth of field, or a large one to put the emphasis on the subject of the photo. Then you have to decide if you need a long shutter speed, to show motion, or a short one to freeze the motion... And then you decide if you can balance the depth of field for the length of exposure... And once you've done all of that, you finally take the photo.

For me, I get a lot of enjoyment from both types of shot, but in very different ways. I'm always thrilled when I see that a photo "works", even if I wasn't planning it to, and it was just an accident. But there's a different sense of enjoyment from a well planned photo, where you've taken to time to make sure everything is right, and you know (well, you hope you do) that you've got a good shot. I get a lovely feeling of satisfaction from such photos, especially if I've had to work hard to get them

This photo is a particular favourite of mine, for a number of reasons. For starters, it's not a shot any one could have got by parking their car, and snapping away. I had to work for it. The falls in question have had a massive log in the main fall for a number of years, and any photo from the track is going to be overwhelmed by the log. How do you get around that? Easy, you hop from rock to rock across the river...

Having done all that, all I needed to do was find a spot on the opposite bank where I could set up my tripod, hopefully keep my feet dry, frame the shot without the log if possible, or if not, frame it so that the log doesn't dominate the shot anymore. If you're lucky, that'll be on a nice patch of firm, level ground, but in reallity, it's more likely to be on a wet, slippery rock.

Having framed the shot nicely, all I needed to do was decide on the exposure. It's at this point I'm forced to digress, and ponder the tendency for photographers to _always_ use a long shutter speed when photographing moving water. Sure, it looks nice, but so do the million other photos with similar exposures. In this case, I decided to hold back a bit, and limited myself to 1/2 a second, which allowed some blur, but not an excessive amount. Of course, this is all personal preference, and other people may feel differently.

Getting back on track, once all of that is decided, it's time to actually take the photo, a process which is infinitesimally tiny, compared to all that has gone before it. Hopefully all the planning which has gone into the shot will have paid off, and you end up with a great shot. If course, life being what it is, this doesn't always happen, and you bump the tripod just as you take the shot, and it ends up a blurry mess... As they say, "Shit happens"... There's always next time...