Thanks for picking out the Morocco picture Alex, I certainly worked hard to get it. I can’t say if it fits David’s definition of a “decisive moment” but I’d argue that it shows pretty good timing

David, I agree that I can be the person who decides what works and what doesn’t according to my vision but that’s as far as it goes. I might love HCB’s “man jumping over a puddle” shot and you might think it’s pants. Clearly HCB liked it and thought, I suppose, that it was the decisive moment that presented his vision but if you don’t agree then you’re not wrong. It’s subjective. There’s no absolute and no arbiter who can say what is and what isn’t a decisive moment. So if I say each moment is decisive how can I be wrong. If it’s decisive to me, what’s wrong with that?

I’m not dismissing the value of my own vision but it’s value is only guaranteed to me. Hopefully, others will see the vision too or I won’t eat next month but perhaps that’s more to do with me being able to provide what the majority of people are likely to respond positively too.

I’m playing Devil’s Advocate a little here because I do see and understand the principle of the decisive moment as HCB (and David) have defined it (at least, I thought I did) but there’s danger here I suspect. To my mind, photography can’t be reduced by analysis in this way. Well, it can in retrospect and there are plenty of art gallery owners and picture buyers who make a living doing so but we’re the producers and I think that you have to shoot instinctively or you’ll be lost.

So, I’ll stick with Wilsonian’s definition but I think that “golden form” can only be seen in retrospect. You can’t teach somebody how to shoot it because it’s too intangible. Too much thinking will just be confusing and you run the risk of being paralysed as you try to figure out where the tension and composition reach their peak, by which time the moment, decisive or otherwise, will have passed.

Perhaps the decisive moment is a bit like the definition of hard-core pornography, I can’t describe it but I know it when I see it.

I think you have put it very nicely – the intersection of composition and tension.

I think the impasse comes from the idea that there is no “golden” compositional form. Therefore such an intersection could be different for each individual viewer even if positioned at the same point.

Could you say then that the “decisive moment” is when the hight of tension (in the story you are telling/shooting) and the hight of composition intersect?

And here’s a quotation:
“…As I entered his magnificent rue de Rivoli apartment, Henri greeted me with a table spread with contact sheets.

Incredibly, they had a number of different images within each sequence highlighted for reproduction. Impishly gleeful at my perplexity, he informed me: “So now you see? Le moment decisif is a matter not only of capturing the content of an image, but of placing it in context.” It was the proof that there could, in fact, not only be a compositionally perfect moment in time, but also a precisely appropriate image to tell a particular story. ”

from:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1279220,00.html

Make your own conclusions.

The biggest of the questions that come to mind is “What is my role as a photographer, what is my purpose and intent?”. In terms of decisive moments that gives me this question .. and using HCB as the reference .. I did a quick google search and one of his images which came up was of a guy jumping across water and his heel is just about to touch the water. I would surely think of that as a decisive moment, captured to perfection but what if a couple of seconds later a man came into the frame brandishing a pistol?

In the HCB picture i’d have captured the decisive moment of what was in front of my camera at the time, but if that was the only shot i’d taken then I would have missed the decisive moment which told the true stroy. At that point, as a photographer, is my role to tell only the story before me, or is it to tell the story itself?

David, you’re right, as I think my example above possibly shows as well and we are a little wrapped up in the semantics of “the moment”. Likewise my brain is whirring (actually it’s more like coughing and spluttering with an occasional backfire) and whilst i’d agree that the photographers vision and gifts are of utmost importance, i’ve still got that little question mark hanging over how we should use them.

In relation to HCB then I think there is certainly validity in the point he made, but then i’d also question whether his viewpoint was too narrow and his position was more that of artist than observer. That is to say, the creator of a piece of art rather than a chronicler of events? If that’s so, then we’re back to semantics and the need to determine the decisive moment and whether or not that’s determined by the positioning of elements within the frame or the unfolding of events, still within that same frame. Imagining a nice wide-angle lens: If you push me into a pool, would the decisive moment be you pushing me, the look of surprise on my face, my body hitting the water, etc, etc?

/Note to self: Go and read some HCB.. quickly!! :p

Still, I think we recognize these moments as much with our hearts as we do our trained eye.

Great discussion, folks – this is exactly the kind of discussion that really gets my brain whiring and makes us all, if we engage the question, better and more thoughtful photographers.