bmattock
Veteran
HCB expressed the term "Decisive Moment" in 1952, and people have been arguing about it ever since. Some have said that HCB was right, there is a moment in time that a street photographer must learn to recognize, while others have argued against the existance of a 'Decisive Moment' at all.
My opinion is that both groups often misunderstand what Henri meant, and he declined to correct them during his lifetime, for whatever reasons. What I feel he meant was that there is a moment when all the compositional elements expressing your point of view come together, and you take the photograph at that moment. Not that it 'happens' without you - you arrange the elements in your mind, you move your body and your camera and exhibit patience and judgement to make it happen. If you fail to capture it, you make it again, if the elements still exist in the moving stream of time. The DM is not something that exists outside of the photographer's experience as an independent entity - it only exists in the mind and eye of the photographer.
I think I first recognized this when reading a story written by a student of Garry Winogrand's. He asked Garry if he ever worried about the photographs he missed while he was reloading his Leica after firing off a roll of film. Garry replied "When I am reloading, there are no photographs." Talk about your zen-like moments! I was thunderstruck, and I have spent much time contemplating what it means to be a street photographer, and what the Decisive Moment really means, in the way HCB meant it.
Here is my analogy, and please forgive me - it involves firearms. If this bothers you, please read no further. This is something I well understand, and it helps me to grasp the DM concept.
Imagine a long-range target rifle. It is designed to accurately hit its target at immense distances, when variables like wind (even a slight breeze), temperature (causing abberations similar to a mirage), and humidity even play a part in determining the tiny high-speed bullet's trajectory. The high-powered telescope through which the rifleman looks has a cross-hair which is placed upon the target. But it is not that simple!
The human body is not stable, and with a very high-magnification scope aimed at a distant target, this become obvious. Every breath you take, even the beat of your heart, causes the cross-hairs to jump and shake. The entire target leaps out of your scope's viewfinder and reappears in a whirlwind. You must master your body, learn its rythmns, PREDICT what is likely to happen next. Your breathing and heartbeat will cause a pattern of movement, you learn to recognize that pattern and ride it up, down, and in figure-eight movements. You begin to anticipate what you will see next in your viewfinder. You lean to master your need to shift position, scratch an itch, wipe your brow. You concentrate on your own body, and the rifle takes care of itself.
You cannot 'make' the crosshairs stay on the target - they will not. You must instead wait until that ideal moment when the crosshairs are ABOUT to once again match your idea of perfect aim, and BE READY to fire. All the slack must be out of your trigger, because squeezing it causes the rifle to move. It must be held just at the breaking point - and you'd better know what that breaking point is; how far you can go without it going off. You must already have your 'dope' as they call windage and elevation on your scope - to compensate for what you cannot see, but which will affect your bullet's trajectory.
And now all you can do is wait. Trust in your own preparation, your own body's predictability, and the scope will begin to move in a predictable pattern. You are not making it move, rather, you are influencing its movement and predicting what it will do next, based on what it has done before. You can't master the scope, you must instead try to master the conditions under which it moves. It begins with an understanding of oneself. The 'zen' of shooting, as it were. It should come as no surprise that many of the world's best target shooters are also practitioners of meditation.
This is how we shooters recognize the DM. The precise moment that all is right when the cross-hairs are once again about to rest on the target, we finish the trigger pull with a nearly imperceptible movement of our index finger, and it is done, for good or for ill.
This is street photography done for the DM. We load our camera with film we understand - we know the ISO, we know how it responds in varying conditions, how far we can push or pull it. We know our camera and our lens, and we know such things as DOF tables for that lens in our heads. At any given f-stop, we know how to quickly estimate distance to the subject and we can zone focus and be certain that the subject will at least have minimum acceptable focus. We have held our camera in our hands so long that we can operate it without looking at it, and when we hold it to our chest and fire, we know in what direction it was aimed, nearly as surely as if we had held it to our eye. We know at what distance we tend to work most, and that's where we leave our focus most of the time, just as we know our favorite lighting conditions and have our 'dope' dialed in - aperture and shutter speed. We can adjust if we have to, but we will be ready for 80% of the situations we'll face.
We know that focusing is optional, beyond a rough guess backed with an understanding of DOF for a given aperture and a given distance to the subject. We know that framing is much more important and we work with one lens most times, because we know from experience where the edges of that frame are, almost as if the camera projected the frame on the scene as we looked at it without the camera.
We know where the sun is when we shoot - at our back, in front of us, and we have in our heads the background against which we place our subjects - we are good at moving ourselves to recompose, since our subjects will go where they will, regardless of what distracting element might be in the background. We even pay attention to the wind and clouds if they cause shadows to appear and vanish, which might affect our exposure by many f-stops. We are patient - the subject will appear, and moment will arrive. Or if it does not, we'll move on. There are always subjects.
When we can do these things, we can recognize the 'Decisive Moment' because we made it. True, if one is taking a photo of a car wreck that happens in front of one, one has only one chance to get it right. But most situations are not quite like that, they present themselves over and over again to the person who can see it and take advantage of it.
Photography students will be perplexed - "How do you know?" they will ask. You look, and you know. You learn by doing. You hit it and feel the exultation that a baseball player does when the ball leaves the bat like a rocket, you miss it and feel like the feeling you get when you hit a bad slice in golf. It is either right or it is not. But the moment did not exist outside of yourself.
The DM is about our own creativity and ability to visualize a scene that says something we wish to say. That probably cannot be taught. A painter may learn to paint a recognizable tree, but can he or she paint it such that it makes a statement? That is the artists vision coming through - it is no different in photography. But the DM also requires a rigorous understanding of a number of other elements, a being at one-ness with one's equipment and the conditions of the time and place where one is located.
The Decisive Moment is not an attribute of the scene you wish to photograph. It is an attribute of yourself. Therefore, set up the elements you wish, using what you see coming together - your target. Master your tools and your mind to be patient and have faith in what your camera, lens, and film will record. When the elements come together as you wish, be ready. If they do not come together, either wait some more or move on to the next thing.
Well, just some random thoughts. Hope you enjoyed it.
Best Regards,
Bill Mattocks
My opinion is that both groups often misunderstand what Henri meant, and he declined to correct them during his lifetime, for whatever reasons. What I feel he meant was that there is a moment when all the compositional elements expressing your point of view come together, and you take the photograph at that moment. Not that it 'happens' without you - you arrange the elements in your mind, you move your body and your camera and exhibit patience and judgement to make it happen. If you fail to capture it, you make it again, if the elements still exist in the moving stream of time. The DM is not something that exists outside of the photographer's experience as an independent entity - it only exists in the mind and eye of the photographer.
I think I first recognized this when reading a story written by a student of Garry Winogrand's. He asked Garry if he ever worried about the photographs he missed while he was reloading his Leica after firing off a roll of film. Garry replied "When I am reloading, there are no photographs." Talk about your zen-like moments! I was thunderstruck, and I have spent much time contemplating what it means to be a street photographer, and what the Decisive Moment really means, in the way HCB meant it.
Here is my analogy, and please forgive me - it involves firearms. If this bothers you, please read no further. This is something I well understand, and it helps me to grasp the DM concept.
Imagine a long-range target rifle. It is designed to accurately hit its target at immense distances, when variables like wind (even a slight breeze), temperature (causing abberations similar to a mirage), and humidity even play a part in determining the tiny high-speed bullet's trajectory. The high-powered telescope through which the rifleman looks has a cross-hair which is placed upon the target. But it is not that simple!
The human body is not stable, and with a very high-magnification scope aimed at a distant target, this become obvious. Every breath you take, even the beat of your heart, causes the cross-hairs to jump and shake. The entire target leaps out of your scope's viewfinder and reappears in a whirlwind. You must master your body, learn its rythmns, PREDICT what is likely to happen next. Your breathing and heartbeat will cause a pattern of movement, you learn to recognize that pattern and ride it up, down, and in figure-eight movements. You begin to anticipate what you will see next in your viewfinder. You lean to master your need to shift position, scratch an itch, wipe your brow. You concentrate on your own body, and the rifle takes care of itself.
You cannot 'make' the crosshairs stay on the target - they will not. You must instead wait until that ideal moment when the crosshairs are ABOUT to once again match your idea of perfect aim, and BE READY to fire. All the slack must be out of your trigger, because squeezing it causes the rifle to move. It must be held just at the breaking point - and you'd better know what that breaking point is; how far you can go without it going off. You must already have your 'dope' as they call windage and elevation on your scope - to compensate for what you cannot see, but which will affect your bullet's trajectory.
And now all you can do is wait. Trust in your own preparation, your own body's predictability, and the scope will begin to move in a predictable pattern. You are not making it move, rather, you are influencing its movement and predicting what it will do next, based on what it has done before. You can't master the scope, you must instead try to master the conditions under which it moves. It begins with an understanding of oneself. The 'zen' of shooting, as it were. It should come as no surprise that many of the world's best target shooters are also practitioners of meditation.
This is how we shooters recognize the DM. The precise moment that all is right when the cross-hairs are once again about to rest on the target, we finish the trigger pull with a nearly imperceptible movement of our index finger, and it is done, for good or for ill.
This is street photography done for the DM. We load our camera with film we understand - we know the ISO, we know how it responds in varying conditions, how far we can push or pull it. We know our camera and our lens, and we know such things as DOF tables for that lens in our heads. At any given f-stop, we know how to quickly estimate distance to the subject and we can zone focus and be certain that the subject will at least have minimum acceptable focus. We have held our camera in our hands so long that we can operate it without looking at it, and when we hold it to our chest and fire, we know in what direction it was aimed, nearly as surely as if we had held it to our eye. We know at what distance we tend to work most, and that's where we leave our focus most of the time, just as we know our favorite lighting conditions and have our 'dope' dialed in - aperture and shutter speed. We can adjust if we have to, but we will be ready for 80% of the situations we'll face.
We know that focusing is optional, beyond a rough guess backed with an understanding of DOF for a given aperture and a given distance to the subject. We know that framing is much more important and we work with one lens most times, because we know from experience where the edges of that frame are, almost as if the camera projected the frame on the scene as we looked at it without the camera.
We know where the sun is when we shoot - at our back, in front of us, and we have in our heads the background against which we place our subjects - we are good at moving ourselves to recompose, since our subjects will go where they will, regardless of what distracting element might be in the background. We even pay attention to the wind and clouds if they cause shadows to appear and vanish, which might affect our exposure by many f-stops. We are patient - the subject will appear, and moment will arrive. Or if it does not, we'll move on. There are always subjects.
When we can do these things, we can recognize the 'Decisive Moment' because we made it. True, if one is taking a photo of a car wreck that happens in front of one, one has only one chance to get it right. But most situations are not quite like that, they present themselves over and over again to the person who can see it and take advantage of it.
Photography students will be perplexed - "How do you know?" they will ask. You look, and you know. You learn by doing. You hit it and feel the exultation that a baseball player does when the ball leaves the bat like a rocket, you miss it and feel like the feeling you get when you hit a bad slice in golf. It is either right or it is not. But the moment did not exist outside of yourself.
The DM is about our own creativity and ability to visualize a scene that says something we wish to say. That probably cannot be taught. A painter may learn to paint a recognizable tree, but can he or she paint it such that it makes a statement? That is the artists vision coming through - it is no different in photography. But the DM also requires a rigorous understanding of a number of other elements, a being at one-ness with one's equipment and the conditions of the time and place where one is located.
The Decisive Moment is not an attribute of the scene you wish to photograph. It is an attribute of yourself. Therefore, set up the elements you wish, using what you see coming together - your target. Master your tools and your mind to be patient and have faith in what your camera, lens, and film will record. When the elements come together as you wish, be ready. If they do not come together, either wait some more or move on to the next thing.
Well, just some random thoughts. Hope you enjoyed it.
Best Regards,
Bill Mattocks
