Sometimes, you'll need a plan.

I spent the evening on the beach where I live, overlooking the castle (bottom right) with my girls waiting on the fireworks to start. I looked around and seen a few photographers already set up and ready. They had been there before the sunset.

The rest of the herd of photographers arrived in the pressing crowd. They pushed and moved their way to find a spot — with a less than ideal vantage on what they wanted.

The fireworks kicked off and were amazing, really lovely to watch. As a creative I kept my eye on the other guys taking pictures as I love to see what others do and usually learn from these moments. From experience, I knew who would get the best pictures on this night...

The trick to taking pictures at night is focus. If you have the correct settings and don’t have time to check focus: Your hard work of turning up with a camera in the cold is lost.

In this case, the guys that arrived at sunset would have made the time to run a few test shots off and got the shot perfectly lined up then took more time to set exposure.

The other guys that turned up late, well, they would be hunting for their lens, setting up the tripod, and then messing around with settings as the first explosion happened. This would then put pressure on them to create the shot and most likely result in blurry, over or underexposed shots.

My take away from watching all this was preparation. I am a huge advocate in just 'getting going', I would be like the late shooters with a camera in hand and saying to myself that it is best to just get there and start. Then refine as you go. But in this case, you don’t have time to refine as you go. If you did not start with a plan, then the action will fail. If you came with action you would find no plan.

So as big a fan I am on starting stuff and refining it as you go, I discovered that not preparing for certain events will leave you caught out. So it has got me wondering what actions have I already started and they are dependent on plans being set properly beforehand?

There must be a balance, you can’t spend your whole like planning for something, but equally you can’t just start things and hope for the best as you go at them.

Regardless, if you wanted to turn up late (like me and my girls) grab a shot and go, the result will be 1000% better than planning all day and not turning up over a failing in the plan. So, for now, I’ll fire on with building momentum. But be mindful of the need to create a plan for certain events in life.

Below is some of the shots I grabbed late (from video footage I took). They are grand, but I wonder what I'd have got if I turned up early with a plan?