Assignment 3 – The Decisive Moment – before and after

Introduction

the brief:

Send a set of between six and eight high-quality photographic prints on the theme of the ‘decisive moment’ to your tutor. Street photography is the traditional subject of the decisive moment, but it doesn’t have to be. Landscape may also have a decisive moment of weather, season or time of day. A building may have a decisive moment when human activity and light combine to present a ‘peak’ visual moment.
You may choose to create imagery that supports the tradition of the ‘decisive moment’, or you may choose to question or invert the concept. Your aim isn’t to tell a story, but in order to work naturally as a series there should be a linking theme, whether it’s a location, an event or a particular period of time.

Research

The Decisive Moment is a concept made popular by Street Photographer; Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB).  It is about capturing images at their optimum moment. That is; when all of the elements in the image reach the point where the environment, the people, the time, the light etc all come together for the perfect composition.

In an interview with Raphaël O’Byrne, for the film: I’amour tout court –  (https://vimeo.com/106009378); HCB says that “most people don’t look properly at their subject, they just press the shutter button, but then he describes one of his most famous images of a man jumping a puddle, to be ‘just luck’.  Later in the film he speaks about how he framed his images using geometry and the ‘divine proportion’ and that he knew instinctively where to find it. 

It is my observation that he created the ‘luck’ by first choosing the right place to be to get an aesthetically pleasing image and then watched and waited for the right thing to happen.  His image of a man on a bike in Hyères, France in 1932 is an example of this. 

Photographer and OCA Tutor: Clive White reinforces this assumption with his comment on the OCA forum:

“The decisive moment isn’t an outdated Modernist conceit, it’s an ever present appropriate strategy concerned with when you decided to press the shutter button. It’s the second most important decision the photographer makes after framing.”

Street Photographer Eric Kim; in his article ‘How to Master “The Decisive Moment”’, says that HCB believed that:

• “The Decisive Moment” was that split second of genius and inspiration that a photographer had to capture a certain moment
• You can never recreate the same circumstances in terms of location and people.
• You must constantly be looking for moments to capture,
• Once that moment is gone, it is gone forever

Before and After

The concept of “The Decisive Moment” is fairly simple and to answer this brief, I believe I need to identify the framing I would like to explore and then wait for the optimum moment.  However, in researching this subject, the idea that “The Decisive Moment” is different from the moment before and the moment after has intrigued me, as one could argue that it is a series of decisive moments.  Therefore, I have decided to explore this concept:

In exploring how I could depict both before and after “The Decisive Moment” I researched photographers using double exposure:

• Martin Dietrich – source: http://www.martindietrichphotography.de/about-me/
• Christian Stoll – source: http://www.christian-stoll.com/website/photos_detail.php?gallerieID=1102&gallery=new-york_split_second   
• Jo Teasdale – source: http://www.joteasdalephotography.com/blog/2017/6/21/smdd72ehyx73xi6i6r9dpp192vx26x

My reviews of their work, can be read in my blog: http://debraflynnphotography.co.uk/EYV-blog/assignment-3-research/.  I really like the idea of multiple decisive moments overlain in one image.

Following the idea of framing the image first, I found a local park which has some ‘art deco’ style shelters with a path running directly alongside it.  Having visited the first time on a very wet day when not much was happening, I was pleased with the initial results and visited a further 4 times to collect my images for this brief.  I did try other areas and places without shelters, but I really liked the structure and framing that the shelter gave me.  I took “The Decisive Moment” as the moment that the person passed me. That remains unseen, so I have captured the before and after.

Each of the final images have areas of clarity and areas for confusion but are held together by the structure of the shelter windows.  They show that the before and after are just as decisive as any moment.  So it’s the photographer’s framing and decision that create “The Decisive Moment”.

Technical approach and evaluation

Photography:

To produce these images, a couple of different methods were employed.

1. Using a Nikon D810 DSLR on a tripod, taking an image of a person coming towards me and then rotating on the tripod to take an image as they walked away from me. These were combined in photoshop.  Images 1, 2 and 4 are examples of this method
2. Using a Fujifilm X-t20 mirrorless camera, handheld and using the double exposure option in camera. Images 3, 5 & 6 are examples of this method.

Using the smaller mirrorless camera, was much easier and less conspicuous than the DSLR, and doing the double exposure at the time, meant I had to get it right in camera.  It was easy to use and ultimately more satisfying as there was less editing to do in post-production.  It also felt more authentic.

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Printing:

The images have been printed using a Canon iP8700 series printer on A4, 179 gsm matte photo paper.  In order to get good quality, the brightness and contrast need to be increased for printing.

Reflection

I feel I have taken a risk with this brief as it would probably have been much easier to just go out and take 6 images of ‘decisive moments’, but that didn’t really interest me.  I have found during this course that I like the juxtapositions of things: In assignment 1 I explored how people used a stretch of the promenade. In assignment 2 – I explored inside and out and to an extent; decisive moments as I tried to capture people doing things.  In this assignment I have explored before and after a specific event.  This realisation has given me a better understanding of what it is I want to say as a photographer, something I have been battling with for a while.

As a way of testing this concept, I entered image #1 in a camera club competition before submitting this assignment.  The critique was very interesting as although it was given good feedback, the reviewer wasn’t aware it was a double exposure.   It would be interesting to see how others perceive the images without prior knowledge of my thinking.  Or does that even matter?

“The Decisive Moment” has taught me that as a photographer you must always think about why you want to press the shutter button at that instant, otherwise why are you even taking the photo.