I’ve been thinking about accidental photography lately.

What sparked the idea was a video I watched on the Leica channel. They were interviewing photographer Graciela Iturbide, and one thing she said really stuck with me.

She explained that one of her favorite photographs, and one of her most well-known photographs, was essentially accidental. She doesn’t remember taking it. She doesn’t know if it was a misfire. She doesn’t even know exactly how it happened.

That got me thinking.

Are there really accidents in photography?

Or is what we call an accident actually intuition taking over?

Personally, I think it’s the latter.

When you’ve been making photographs for a long time, the camera becomes second nature. That’s one reason I like the Ricoh so much. At a certain point it feels like an extension of your arm. You stop thinking about the mechanics and simply react.

After enough years of photographing, your instincts become incredibly refined.

So when someone says they made a picture by accident, I often wonder if it wasn’t really an accident at all. Maybe it was intuition operating faster than conscious thought.

Of course, true accidents happen.

Sometimes you accidentally press the shutter, point the camera at the ground, and end up with something interesting. But those moments are relatively rare.

What’s more common is that your instincts recognize something before your conscious mind does.

A lot of the photographs I make are like that.

I’ll see something, point the camera, click, and keep moving. Sometimes I’m barely looking through the viewfinder. Later, when I review the images, I’ll find photographs that surprise me.

The funny thing is that this approach often produces images I genuinely like.

The compositions are different. Unexpected things enter the frame. The results can feel more spontaneous and alive than photographs that were carefully planned.

That’s why I think intuition plays a much bigger role than we realize.

For photographers who have spent decades making pictures, instinct becomes part of the process. What appears accidental may actually be the result of thousands of hours of practice.

The other thing I loved about the interview was something Graciela said near the end.

Despite a lifetime of great work, she said she still feels like she has so far to go.

That attitude really resonated with me.

I think the best photographers stay in a constant state of learning. They never feel like they’ve reached the mountaintop.

You always want to keep climbing.

The moment you believe you’ve figured everything out, there’s nowhere left to go.

What keeps photography interesting is the feeling that there’s still something left to discover.

There’s another photograph to make.

Another idea to think about.

Another lesson to learn.

It was inspiring to hear someone with such a long career still talking that way.

So if you get the chance, check out the interview with Graciela Iturbide. The discussion about accidental photography was fascinating, but what stayed with me most was her curiosity and humility.

After all these years, she still feels like she’s learning.

I think that’s the mindset worth keeping.