Certainly in photography, and no doubt in many other creative fields as well, serendipity — the chance encounter of a telling result — can play an important role. For that to happen, though, the photographer (or artist) must be open to "discovering" something that one cannot actually search for.
An interesting article in the NY TIMES talks about the relevance of serendipity to science, though the path is really the same for any creative enterprise:
As people dredge the unknown, they are engaging in a highly creative act. What an inventor “finds” is always an expression of him- or herself… One survey of patent holders found that an incredible 50 percent of patents resulted from what could be described as a serendipitous process. Thousands of survey respondents reported that their idea evolved when they were working on an unrelated project — and often when they weren’t even trying to invent anything.
[NY TIMES]
