Day Twenty-Seven: The Decisive Moment

This afternoon I drove out to Chapel Hill to shoot on Franklin Street and on the quad there.  The light was filtering through the enormous old trees and making interesting shadows on the paths and lawns.  So I found myself a spot into which life would move, and I waited.  I liked the balance of the lamposts on the left and windows on the right.  And I wanted the figure in my photo to be moving perpendicular to the point of view, which creates tension in the composition.  Then I waited for life to stroll by.

I had groups, singles, people walking dogs and pushing bikes.  I shot some of them, but none of that was what I was looking for.  I was waiting for the "decisive moment."  That term (coined by Henri Cartier Bresson) has always seemed somewhat limited to me.  While I understand the objective, to me, it's not necessarily that the moment be decisive, but rather that the elements in the composition be caught at the apogee of their action within the frame.

Here, the gentlemen striding down the path interplays with the girl in the background,  His stride is long and purposeful, moving along his path.  Her stride is more casaul.  He is moving across the frame, she deeper into it.  While there are two figures in the frame, they are isolated from each other.  The eye is drawn to the path into the photo by the placement of the subjects-- the static lamposts and windows, and the dynamic figures.  Neither has crossed into the plane of the vertical path...in an instant, both will.  And an instant ago, they were not yet in the frame.

This is the apogee, or, if you prefer, the decisive moment.
 

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