Hi Rachel,
Trust me here! The framing of a picture is where the hunter's skill combines with the creative part of the brain. When the two meet you are ready!
It's a huge jump from liking something to being able to make a picture.
Adams spent hours even weeks or months on one idea. There was a tremendous effort on the
concept and how the landscape could be
used to be the foundation of his inner vision. This part of Ansel Adam's brilliant work people get's little attention compared to following his famous "zone system"
* which has formed the basis for all photography since.
I strongly advocate looking at
Intent in photography. I have postulated, for
my own work, that there's an
"Arc of Intent" and ultimately an
"Arc of Communication" when we make art.
The idea must be formed in the brain. One decides to make the photograph and then does the work. Finally when one is satisfied, enough work is done. Now, one has one's vision embedded and it satisfies! Your work reinvokes a family of feelings, ideas and implications that first started the project. Interestingly, the
final image will always be different as we change as we see the work in progress.
Our vision feeds on the work in an iterative process. Also we change with our life events so the artist and art always evolve and change each other in the process. However, Rachel, if one doesn't start with a vision, one can get lost, wandering with a lantern, picking up whatever catches ones fancy in that particular moment of image processing.
So, I'm an advocate for thought invested before action. That is why previsualization and pondering the matter is so important. The person who says take 200 pictures a day or a week is entirely mistaken. Take 4 careful pictures a day and no one will match your progress. But first one needs to slow down, then use one lens and learn that better than your mother knew you.
I'm arguing for simplicity before complexity. Change only one variable at a time.
The progression is choice of subject, approach and perspective, one lens one knows and a simple camera setting. After that, one can work on extracting the image that was in your head from the RAW file.
Asher
*The Zone system is an approach where the brightness or darkness of a scene is partitioned by decree into 10 zones degrees of illumination, from utter darkness to the brightest white. But what's the point?
Adam's created for his photgraphy is a useful tool to access the full the dynamic range capability of the photosensitive film or paper.
Too much or too little light or the wrong choice of film sensitivity means one has wasted opportunity for making a fully expressive image.
So the scene must match a film and the shutter and aperture setting must allow the dark and the bright areas to be shown. Here's a brief description of the full set of zones, Norman Karen's Simplified Zone System and and article he wrote in Luminous Landscape. Lightzone™ is based on the zone system and even Aperture™ and Lightroom™ and RAW processing depend on the fundamentals that Adams established. 
