I’ve always been fascinated by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s phrase, “The Decisive Moment.” Essentially, it refers to a single fleeting moment that is captured by a photographer by being in the right place at the right time. In real life, that “decisive moment” might have gone by so fast that most of us didn’t register it as a singular moment. However, the photographer clicked the shutter at the precise moment and preserved the instant forever as a still image.
A powerful image can end up becoming part of our visual vocabulary and can represent our own ideas about an event or subject, even if we were there to see it for ourselves. In that way, the photographer who captures the specific instant with their camera actually helps define the scene for the rest of the world through the power of the image.
Most of us weren’t there to see Muhammad Ali knock Sonny Liston to the canvas, but this photo says it all. And most of us have not seen the Potala Palace, but when we think of it, Galen Rowell’s famous image often comes to mind. Our thoughts about these two subjects have been heavily influenced by these powerful images.
However, not all great photographs are rooted in capturing and freezing a specific moment in time. In fact, many powerful images are based on a photographer’s personal interpretation and unique representation of a static subject that has been seen, and perhaps photographed by many other people. Travel photos and some landscapes fall into this category.
Here are two examples of images that fall into this category: Stairs at The Vatican and a landscape of Colorado aspens. They’re both beautiful and personal visual representations of mostly static subjects.
Great photographs can be made with either method and I encourage you to go out in the world and look for decisive moments as well as static subjects that you capture in your own creative way.
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