Henri Cartier-Bresson's Decisive Moment

In his book The Decisive Moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson (recommended to me by professor and photographer Mike Sell) said about photography: "There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment." He also said, "To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression."

His photograph below is a perfect example of what he meant. Happening to peer through the fence at the right time Cartier-Bresson saw a man preparing to jump off a plank into a puddle of water.

Henri Cartier-Bresson.

That is something that I've always had trouble with when it came to "moment" photography. First of all, I need to have a sense that "something" or an "action" was about to occur. And secondly, be able to have the camera ready to take at that "right" moment. My primary trouble is with the latter. I take too long to get the camera in focus, set the shutter and aperture I want, and frame the image. By the time I am ready, the action was over.

While doing an image search for Cartier-Bresson, I found a blog by a photographer named Kevin Vandivier where he succeeded in capturing a decisive moment.

In fact, once learning what was going on in the image, I realized how "perfect" this moment was. This cowboy, while branding and castrate calves, would flip the calf over with one hand to castrate him. The terror on the calf's face is absolutely evident and instills a horrific shock within the viewer. In a similar way that Cartier-Bresson's photo puts us on the edge of our seat as his foot reaches the threshold of the water, the calf opens our eyes to the treatment of cattle.

Without a doubt, if I am interested in "moment" photography, I need to work harder to be faster with my camera set up and learn how to adequately sense when that "action" will occur.