The Decisive Moment?

During a recent Facebook discussion about the advantage of using an external incident light meter instead of a built-in reflective light meter a photographer questioned my ability to capture the “decisive moment” if I had to stop to meter the scene.

The “decisive moment” has been attributed to French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and refers to his insight that a split second captured by a photographer can reveal a larger truth of a situation.

But look at his images and look at the images of other photographers who are advocates of this form of street photography.

If you look closely you may seem images which have been setup by the photographer. Now I don’t mean the photographer actually posed the people in the image but in many shots it’s apparent that the photographer camped out and waited for someone to walk into the frame or waited for something to happen that was photogenic.

And what that means is these photographers had a great deal of time to properly frame, compose and meter the scene.

While the decisive moment may show up unexpectedly it’s the prepared photographer who gets the shot.