Exercise - the decisive moment

This exercise is to try and capture our own 'decisive moments'. There are a number of ways of doing this. By far the easiest is to use a technique whereby the photographer finds an interesting location or composition and waits for something to happen. A person may walk by and fit just the right criteria for the shot. There may be an advertisement, abandoned piece of furniture, or signpost that needs an extra element that a human figure can provide. Another way is to go 'hunting' and look for people doing interesting things. This can be much harder to do because the photographer has no control over background and may incur many 'fails' until the right shot is acquired.

In this exercise I used the latter method, and went for a walk at the beach to see what I could find.

Sequence 1:

I spotted this couple taking a rest at the shoreline and noticed the symmetrical positions that they were using - mirroring each others poses. I used my camera's telephoto lens to zoom in and took a number of shots, hoping that at some point they would do something that could be considered a decisive moment. For me, shot number two, where there is a shared look between them, strengthens the poses they're adopting. In a moment the look has gone and they look down at something in the water. Obviously I'm not Cartier-Bresson, so it's not much of a moment, but it illustrates nonetheless the techniques employed.

In this sequence I noticed the woman struggling with the parasol. I could see much more of the woman than has been captured by my camera. She is barely noticeable. At the moment I was shooting a dog suddenly wandered into shot. I kept shooting and it seems the dog now makes more of an interesting focal point than my original subject. I'd probably choose my fourth shot as the most interesting.

A line of older women leaving the shade of the bench. As they all formed a line to head for the road I zoomed in and began shooting. They began to separate out and there is only one shot that I would consider usable and that is number six. The woman at the end is lagging behind, making her more distinct from the background, and the leader of the pack has not yet started to cross behind the rubbish bin.

This exercise is very difficult to do and requires a good deal of time and effort to achieve any degree of success. I don't know how in the era before digital how photographers managed to achieve so many worthwhile images. I do think that in those days people were more accepting of photographers pointing lenses at them and getting really close. The age of picture magazines probably made it more acceptable. The course notes state that Robert Frank took 28,000 images (on film!) for his book The Americans. Out of that huge number 80 photographs were selected for publication. That is an awful lot of decisive moments to select from.