The Gift of a Decisive Moment

Henri Cartier Bresson, most famous of "street" photographers, coined the phrase "decisive moment" to indicate a discrete instance when some action is happening, about to happen, or has happened.  He said "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera".  There is nothing more exciting to me in photography when such a moment is given by chance.  Of course, most of the time, we don't have our cameras at the ready, and it is just a memory, a moment that "would have made a great picture".

When such a moment does happen and I have a camera, I feel like I have been presented a precious gift.  A few days ago, I had such an experience.

At the end of a day of covering a conference in one of the hotels the Boston area, I sought a quiet place to go over my images to see if there was anything I missed.  I found my self sitting on a bench just inside the hall way leading to the ball room.  I had paid no attention to it, but a wedding party had assembled down the hall and were waiting for the wedding party to arrive.  First came the groomsmen who waited nervously outside the ballroom, followed by the bridesmaids. As I continued to check my images from the conference, they all went inside leaving no one in the wide hall way except myself, at least so I thought.  I happened to turn around to see the bride standing just off the lobby waiting to be guided to the ballroom.  She was alone and gave a lovely smile, so I naturally I turned my camera and got a nice shot.  I knew she must be nervous and in thought about what was to happen, so I looked away a moment to give her privacy.  The "decisive moment" came as I turned and saw her take a deep breathe and look down at her flowers, alone in thought. Soon after someone came out of the ball room and she walked away.

I don't know her or even know who she was, but it is a treasured memory.

(Thanks to Essdras Suarez for the excellent discussion and demonstration of decisive moments).