grant_. Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 hey marc, glad to see you still posting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
._._z Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Every time he thinks he's out, they pull him back in again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fotografz Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Here is another with similar circumstances. I watched this night swimmer do laps, and shot a few frames. Waiting until she was in the spot of light to shoot. Framing just enough to identify the sense of environment and no more (trees and dark bands of night). What was important to me was the lighting, and the form of the swimmer with out stretched arms. Again, no big deal, just an image that I wouldn't have taken if not for the relationship of the swimmer to the light.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fotografz Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Very funny AZ. Did I mistake this for the Leica forum? I never stopped posting. I did a series of commercial shots on the people forum and have been a steady poster on the new wedding forum. But you knew that ; -) Hi Grant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uhooru Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Sorry to go against the grain, but I'm not ackowledging that nothing in this thread doesn't achieve that. My arch shot for one, is a "decisive" moment. At least as seen through my rose colored glasses. Marc's as well. This thread is somewhatlike the emperor's new cloths in reverse. Are you sure, you would know one when you saw it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad_ Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 So what's up with this decisive moment stuff, anyway - to honor HCB? Just do your thing. Nothing wrong with ending up with a decent pic, decisive moment or not. <BR> <P> <center> <img src= "http://pages.sbcglobal.net/b-evans/IMAGES/PlaneWash.jpg"><BR> <I>Self Service ©2003 Brad Evans</I> </center> www.citysnaps.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ray . Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 OK, may as well... Here's my entry.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_somerset1 Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Just to beat the definition to death, some words from the source that I just ran across on the web: �Sometimes you have the feeling that here are all the makings of a picture�except for just one thing that seems to be missing. You wait and wait, and then finally you press the button�and you depart with the feeling (though you don�t know why) that you�ve really got something. Later, to substantiate this, you can take a print of this picture . . . and you�ll discover that, if the shutter was released at the decisive moment, you have instinctively fixed a geometric pattern without which the photograph would have been both formless and lifeless.� (The Decisive Moment, 1952) So it would appear, Matt, that the term "decisive moment" was in fact coined (in translation) by HCB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex_Es Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 John Lo Pinto made me think of Goethe's Faust. Faust can have immortality until he says, "Oh moment stay, for thou art fair." Then Mephisto must come to fetch him and take him straight to Hell. In Part II he does find his fair moment and dies. But as Mephisto arrives on the scene to take him away, the angels and take Faust to Heaven, singing, "He who struggles with all his power we are allowed to save." So are we in effect saying, "Oh moment stay..." Every time we press the shutter release? If so we must be doing something right because no one has yet sent any of us to hell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uhooru Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 I was looking thru my stuff for more decisive moments, but couldn't find any, so how's about a devisive moment???<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_somerset1 Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 <i>"So are we in effect saying, "Oh moment stay..." Every time we press the shutter release?"</i><p> Well, Sam Abell is, having titled his first book "Stay this moment" after an entry in Virginia Woolf's diary: <p> <i>"If one does not lie back and sum up and say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one's gain, dying? No; stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough."</i><p> The sentiment is quite different from the idea of the decisive moment but suggests a real passion toward photography. It suits Abell's photography nicely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob_lazzarini Posted March 21, 2004 Author Share Posted March 21, 2004 Amazing!!!!<br> This forum is getting far better than the Leica Forum.<br> Whoops!<br> Did I say that?<br> Forgot me meds..... :-0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack_lo_..._t_o Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Barry; you should have waited until she clocks the guy. Like this:<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uhooru Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 It would be a moment all the lads would love to see! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fotografz Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 This is one of the most thought provoking threads I've come across in awhile. It made me not only think about the moment of shutter release and all the intuition that goes into it, but also the act of recognition and editing after the fact. Take HCBs shot of the French policeman juxtaposed to the background image of a gaping mouth. I wonder how many shots he took of passing people in the same position, then edited it to that specific person? Why the Policeman? Because of the look on his face at the time, or because he was a Policeman? Did he know that was the one right when he shot it? Or was the recognition after the fact? A more considered decision, rather than pure intuition? One of the more instructive books I've ever seen was the one where each photographer showed the contact sheet, and then the one selected to print and why. Then there is the matter of subject matter. What one person sees as being that "fair moment" may not move another... even if it could be a "decisive moment". Or does the addition of decisiveness and the intuitive act of recognizing when the elements come together as a whole, transform the ordinary into something else? Can we separate ourselves from our judgment of subject matter, to appreciate an ordinary subject captured in a more extraordinary way? Does the distance of time and place make for a more interesting subject matter, and should it? Things shot in 1930's Paris may be more interesting now than they were at the time when the time and place was familiar to viewers. Here's a shot to illustrate the notion. Most everyone, including myself, shoots family snapshots somewhere along the line. This one was on the 4th of July. I saw the child walking and how the light was illuminating her. I waited for her to pass me and line up with the other little boy in the background. More than just a family snap? Is it not a decisive moment because of the subject matter? Will it take on more interest when found in an attic 150 years from now? Just a snap I liked enough to not trash it.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neild Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 The photos I've seen above tend not to transmit their 'decisiveness' to the viewer - I can see that the shutter release needed to be pressed at a particular moment in the case of some of these photos, but the 'so what' factor is still large (sorry, no offence intended - it has been suggested that the 'so what' factor is alive and well in my portfolio too, and, actually, it most certainly is!). I feel that I have taken only <i>one</i> 'decisive moment' photo so far in my life: <p> <a href="/photo/1234209"><img src="/photodb/image-display?photo_id=1234209&size=sm" height=133 width=200 hspace=10></a> <p> But even this photo, nice as it is, may be considered by some as also not fitting the requirement of describing a 'decisive moment'. I think it does fit the requirement... but I have a heavy bias. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fotografz Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 The "so what" factor can be easily tagged to any image today. It's really an easy thing to say. It's like saying "I don't like it"... to which I reply "so what?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomas_sullivan Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 a little OT........but, Marc made ref to it and I second the thought. The seeing of the contact sheet, and then the pic that was chosen was one of the most instructional moments in my learning process. When I first started all this photo stuff seriously, American Photographer had a continuous column in the mag called "Contact". These were "high power" photogs doing this for them, of some pretty famous pics. To name a few: Andre Kertesz's snow scene, from above, of Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, NYC: Eddie Adams' refugees by the sea: Aaron Siskind's graffitti shots he did in homage to Franz Kline (i beleive): David Hume Kennerly's Cambodian child refugee (won world press 1976).................etc. The years of the mags i have were all 1978 and 1979....I have no idea how long AP did this for.......but if your local library keeps stuff this old, it would be worth the effort to take a look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cd thacker Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 <i>It's about, as some have already pointed out, realizing when a particular set of elements form meaningful relationships.</i><p> <center><img src="http://images.fotopic.net/?id=3297149&outx=320&oq=0&original=1&noresize=1&" width="320" height="240"><p>She never broke stride.</center><p> I'm not sure this is a truly decisive moment (though it may be as close as I've yet come with my mobile phone). But it is one in which, as above, the elements come together in some kind of relationship - one that they had for only a split second. I think the <i>decisive moment</i> is something more than that.<p> I think the heart of HCB's decisive moment lies in <i>lyricism</i>. It isn't enough for the photographer to contrive some sort of relationship and design balance between elements in the frame (though that's nice, too). The lyricism that constitutes the decisive moment occurs when all the elements act more or less <i>in concert</i> to form relationship and balance - which the photographer "merely" records: the HCB puddle image being of course a perfect example. (Apologies to those of you who've already seen this photo.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_somerset1 Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 This talk of contact sheets reminds me of <a/href="http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0206/sam_intro.htm" target="_blank">this presentation</a> on the Digital Journalist. (Sorry for bringing up Sam Abell again -- people will start to think I have a fixation!) In it, Abell talks about how he got to specific pictures.<p> In particular, <a href="http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0206/sam02.htm" target="_blank">this picture</a> is an example of a decisive moment in the classic sense. All of the storytelling elements are in the picture: the iconic cowboy on horseback, the act of taking down the calf for branding, the castration of a calf. And the relationships between the elements, which came together only for an instant, make the picture.<p> If anyone else has examples of photographers discussing their contact sheets or the process of getting the picture, online, maybe they can post them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sliu Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 To give an example to support Marc and Thomas Sullivan's point of view, I took a picture of a page from the book "Photojournalism" (Life Library of Photography). To help you read the text, I didn't resize the 4MP (2272x1704) image. <p> The use of image is legal for the reason mentioned in <a href="http://www.photo.net/mjohnston/column46/">this article</a>.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sliu Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 The cover of the book is also a contact sheet of a decisive moment.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeside Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 How many slightly-different-frames do you tend to shoot? I know I sketch anywhere between three and thirty frames for a given idea, then systematically eliminate the takes that don't work --- someone's eyes are closed, picture is miscomposed, dynamic is missing, etc. Then I choose the best one that does it all. Often the best picture is either the first or the last. Maybe the Decisive Moment refers to a mystical ability to take only the one right picture and not take all the bad ones that would be edited out later. I know this isn't a street photo but http://www.mengwong.com/photography/200212- sgfamily/11.html is the closest I have come to a decisive moment in portraiture. This happened a few moments before the "official" photo was taken, with everyone sitting very composed and solemn. Instead, everybody (whose face isn't obscured, at least) is doing something characteristic of their own personality; as a result the whole picture feels full of energy. If you zoom out to the rest of that directory you'll see all the other (less successful) versions of that shot.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
travis1 Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 :Da<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_somerset1 Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 I'd say the Eisenstadt contact sheet isn't an example of a "decisive moment" in the HCB sense, because it's not a matter of elements of the picture coming together. The only element is Churchill himself. It's just an example of taking a lot of bad pix on the way to a good one. The idea of the decisive moment is more than simply the best shot you happened to get on that roll. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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