Debunking the decisive moment

[RichC]

"I imagined Henri Cartier Bresson waltzing into a street scene, carefully aiming his Leica, and taking only one shot and creating masterpieces."

I'm sometimes approached by photographers - at all levels of experience - despondent about their low number of "keepers", and, all too often, mention the archetype of the photographer who can capture a single iconic image by sleight of hand and eye like some mythic Western gunslinger.

I came across this post. It reminds us we should never take just a single photograph. Instead, we should shoot a roll, fill the memory card - whilst, of course, studying the subject.

There have been occasions when I've been complacent and failed to take enough photographs, thinking I've got the shot - until I see what I've taken. Often, just a few more images with slightly different framing or depth of field or different focus would have meant success instead of failure. You'd think I would've learnt this lesson by now...!

 

[waileong]

No myth to debunk

No myth to debunk

Who said decisive moment means only taking one shot?

What it means is the moment that most encapsulates the essence of the scene. It may mean multiple attempts at capture. But it does mean developing an intuition on when to press the shutter. Not chimping or machine gunning. Especially relevant in the old days with mechanical rewind and 36 shots per roll, not to mention manual focus and exposure.

"I imagined Henri Cartier Bresson waltzing into a street scene, carefully aiming his Leica, and taking only one shot and creating masterpieces."

I'm sometimes approached by photographers - at all levels of experience - despondent about their low number of "keepers", and, all too often, mention the archetype of the photographer who can capture a single iconic image by sleight of hand and eye like some mythic Western gunslinger.

I came across this post. It reminds us we should never take just a single photograph. Instead, we should shoot a roll, fill the memory card - whilst, of course, studying the subject.

There have been occasions when I've been complacent and failed to take enough photographs, thinking I've got the shot - until I see what I've taken. Often, just a few more images with slightly different framing or depth of field or different focus would have meant success instead of failure. You'd think I would've learnt this lesson by now...!

 

[semilog]

Who said decisive moment means only taking one shot?

What it means is the moment that most encapsulates the essence of the scene. It may mean multiple attempts at capture. But it does mean developing an intuition on when to press the shutter. Not chimping or machine gunning. Especially relevant in the old days with mechanical rewind and 36 shots per roll, not to mention manual focus and exposure.

Yes to that. Working a scene to extract a decisive moment does not negate the importance of the moment. There is much to be learned from Bresson's proof sheet. Its title aside, that's a really good article.

 

[FrozenInTime]

check out Magnum Contacts Sheets - a must have book

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Good article from E.K.

If we talk about photography opportunity, which lasts only one moment, spray shot is useless.
If you are Magnum dude who works on assignment, it is different story.

 

[Dektol Dan]

The Moment

The Moment

It IS all about the moment. Photography is like shooting skeet or ducks. It is not art, it is craft and skill. What's your batting average?

My last film outing I batted .666. I'm proud of that. The devil is in details. Check out Bresson's proof sheet. Did you notice his batting average?

Almost any of those shots are keepers, and better than today's photographer aided with auto focus and/or exposure.

I covered a funeral last week with a late model digital SLR, and at least a full fourth of the shots were either incorrectly exposed (back lit situations), haze flared, or out of focus. With today's gear the moment can be robbed by faith in the equipment.

What I can do with a roll a film may take 150 shots with a digital.
'D' doesn't stand for digital, it stands for 'delete'.

 

[Aristophanes]

HCB was wealthy. He churned through film with the capacity for many, many decisive moments.

 

[Lauffray]

HCB was wealthy. He churned through film with the capacity for many, many decisive moments.

True, but beside the point in my opinion. If you're an outsider to the craft, it's easy to imagine someone producing good quality work in one swift, skillful shot because we've been fed the image of the creative genius way too often.

When you hear someone perform a piece of music, or look at a painting, you're not just looking at the final result in front of you, you're looking at hours and hours of work before that, all the practice and study and 99% junk that preceded it.

 

[helvetica]

I will play a slight counter to this theme. The more you are in tune with photography as a craft, the more you know what an image is going to look like even before you bring a viewfinder up, let alone take the shot.

Take something safe and easy - you are with your kids in the park. There are probably a thousand ways the scene could be wrong: distracting background, high-noon sun, etc. Say now you kid is doing something noteworthy, so you move to line up a background that will be pleasant while out of focus, set your aperture for the appropriate DoF, and drop down to be shooting from the correct eye-height as you kid all in one fluid movement. Click. Will it be a perfect shot? Who knows... Take a few to make sure the timing is right.

To a non-photographer you just made a decisive moment. To us, you are just not wasting the time and expense with all of the possibilities that will not yield an interesting photo.

 

[edge100]

Who said decisive moment means only taking one shot?

What it means is the moment that most encapsulates the essence of the scene. It may mean multiple attempts at capture. But it does mean developing an intuition on when to press the shutter. Not chimping or machine gunning. Especially relevant in the old days with mechanical rewind and 36 shots per roll, not to mention manual focus and exposure.

Eric Kim did. And as far as I can tell, if Eric Kim says it, then it's true...at least after you've paid him to tell you. 🙄

 

[Richard G]

Good article. And I read a linked one of his on Zen and Photography. I have increased respect for Eric Kim, by about 3000 per cent.

 

[Georgiy Romanov]

If i remember correctly Mr. William Eggleston says: "I take only one pictures of scene, If i take many i can't decide which one to choose". It is disingenuous. When i'm on street i take a lot of "single image scene", but often they doesn't work. The only thing i knew is what i must push the button as much as i can and someday i find one which will work.

Remember how Garry Winogrand works? He clicking as hell. So, the main point isn't about working hard only with potential scene, it's about simply do a lot of pictures and choose the best one in your opinion. Art of selection is the line that separates the good photographer from the bad photographer.

Hope, i informed my mind.
Georgiy.

 

[rivercityrocker]

If i remember correctly Mr. William Eggleston says: "I take only one pictures of scene, If i take many i can't decide which one to choose".
Georgiy.

This quote was from Imagine | The Colourful Mr. Eggleston. A great BBC documentary that really got me interested in his work. I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jZ_HkaTXh8

 

[RichC]

Who said decisive moment means only taking one shot?

What it means is the moment that most encapsulates the essence of the scene. It may mean multiple attempts at capture.

Lots of people! As I said, a certain mythology has evolved around "the photographer", able to capture a scene in one shot - a view especially prevalent amongst new photographers and non-photographers.

My post was not about what the decisive moment is but how it's captured. (That said, the decisive moment is not quite what many think it is, and more complex: see, for example, my essay "Decoding the decisive moment". However, that is something best discussed in the philosophy forum.)

 

[oneANT]

I haven't spent a lot of time looking at him so you can shoot me down for this first part but HCB appears to me to be more contemplative than decisive. He picks a scene and then waits for it to be occupied and sometimes with a bag of lollies in a pocket. Its like his portraits where he is not so great at extracting but rather waits for something to happen (and just as often it doesn't). To be honest I find him a bit slow minded. The use of his name in a thread about gunslingers is odd too, his keeper ratio to shots shot is very low (isnt it?). Doesnt he only have about 25 or so memorable photographs... [end of shooting]

Also that advice to fire away is a real problem when it doesn't develop the skills that I (and maybe others) use (that EK has never mentioned, not even close). I only shoot the photo not the before and afters, how else do you get the photograph. As for being in the right place at the right time ...well thats the skill of it, isnt it. How are you going to replace quality with quantity if that is how you always go about it. Just buy a video camera instead or trawl google-street. I do have a sequence of 8 shots in my gallery that is itself an explanation of the decisive moment. Elsewhere someone tells me a series of photographs cannot be a decisive moment ... (grin)

..and the greater contradiction is that if you are blazing away then how is it you are also studying the subject. Studying is of course the wrong terminology unless you are a reactive style of photographer where you pounce. The photograph you want is at that moment, not all of them and you are tuned to that moment and yourself. If you are blazing away then get a video camera and remove the frames one by one afterward. All you will learn is editing as a post process. This eagerness to press the shutter is a real problem in street and I think it has more to do with a fondness for the camera than the photograph.

 

[Scrambler]

I learned the "decisive moment" lesson from watching one of the "Pro Photographer/ Cheap Camera" setups on DigitalRev (this one) where Vincent Laforet has what looks to me very much like HCB's approach. He sees a potential photo and waits until reality gets close enough to his idea. Then he takes the photo - or more than one photo. It's the "decisive moment" when everything comes into place.

That's actually quite different from "take a lot of photos." Though with something like a crowd of boys running around it makes sense to take a number of photos.

HCB had a particular approach, shared by Laforet, to structure within the photograph - geometry, shading - played off against human involvement.

The pigeon shot in the linked video (just after 5:00) would not have occurred with a "take a lot of photos" approach. The camera would have been pointing somewhere else at the "decisive moment." At about 6:30-7:00 Laforet references HCB and contact sheets.

It's not "one shot" but it's also not "spray and pray."

 

[Ranchu]

I generally only take the first one, unless I moved the camera or something changes, or I just think it probably sucked. I agree with Eggleston, picking out a picture between a number of similar ones is not what I want to be doing. I don't do street photography though.

 

[RichC]

It's also not "spray and pray."

Absolutely it's not.

 

[David Hughes]

Hi,

Some photographs can only be taken once and then never again; combat, sports etc come to mind.

Others won't change much (landscapes etc) but often need something: the man in the red sweater comes to mind. You can set the camera up and wait or else arrange something yourself and why not?

And others need the scatter gun approach and a lot of luck.

Then to sell the picture you need a bit of hype, another of the creative crafts. And when the hype has made you famous you can sell all the rejects by writing a book about how you did it...

Regards, David

 

[Lss]

It really depends on the moment/scene whether you need to be able to read it, react, and make a single exposure at the right time - or work the scene for a longer time. Working a scene usually gives you something, often something very good, but you may already have missed the killer shot. Even in the former case, there is surely nothing wrong with making more than one exposure.