 How's that? Have you ever wondered how the world's best photographers capture those breathtaking moments that make you pause and see the world in a whole new light? Welcome to our journey into the heart of photography where we are going to explore a concept called the decisive moment, a secret that can transform your images from just simply ordinary to extraordinary. We're going to dive into the world of the masters like Henry Cartier-Bresson and learn how to dance with time to capture your own decisive moments. I hadn't been a photographer for very long before I heard the phrase the decisive moment. It seems like this is a holy grail that is talked about in hushed tones, especially by street photographers. This is the idea that you have a scene, that everything is there and something happens. One tiny elusive intangible. You can't quite put your finger on it. You don't know what it is until you see it. Moment happens and that photograph then is elevated to the pantheon of amazing images. It's like a shadow. It's around you but it's always just out of reach. Henry Cartier-Bresson talked about it at length and his photography is often held up as the shining example of a photographer who instinctively understands how to capture that lightning in a bottle when I was younger. I know it all photographer. I used to think this was all about luck that it was just, ah, you know, Cartier-Bresson was quite lucky. He would just wander around taking a lot of pictures and it just all happened. But it's not. It's about not having an understanding of what the decisive moment is and having a system, yes a system in place to up the chances of you actually being able to capture it. Often we're fed a bit of a white light by certainly documentary filmmakers who make these videos about street photographers walking around. They're always taking pictures and stuff. They're always doing something and now that may be a technique that works for some people. For me, I prefer a little bit more of a methodical approach. The decisive moment is such an elusive thing that I want to think more about it as something that I'm baiting, enticing in towards me. Cartier-Bresson had this wonderful phrase, a hawk's eye and a velvet glove. I'm hoping that's correct because if it's not, I'm going to sound like an idiot, right? But you can see that he's sitting there, he's watching, hunting like the hawk. But then understanding, you can't just get charging in that the decisive moment is a flighty, gentle little thing that needs delicacy. So what I want to do is to set the stage for my images to allow life to unfold in front of me and alert these techniques, these insights on how to get better at a decisive moment. When I was a wedding photographer, I stand to be corrected, but I'm pretty sure the Cartier-Bresson didn't just kind of wander aimlessly around, just shooting random pictures on the off chance that one of them is going to be behind the sand like, like, I don't, I'm learning French, but you'd think I would like 96. Anyway, right, he, you know, he's quite clearly drawn to places where there's the possibility of a moment occurring. And in the wedding photography that I was doing back in 2008, I moved back to the UK and obviously it was just before the recession. So it was a wonderful time to come back to a new country with no contact with, you know, out in the countryside and stuff. So I did weddings and that taught me an important lesson about having places that are like a stage for things to happen upon. John Myovitz, I believe, talks about being in a street corner and standing just for a little while, watch things go. I remember I was, I was talking with somebody here while I was mentoring and they were drawn to a subway station in Chicago that had a wonderful brick thing and we were talking about still street photography and I said, you know that every couple of minutes there's going to be a flood of people down the stairs because obviously the train's going to arrive and people are going to get off it. Set up your image, think about the composition, all that kind of stuff that you can use and then see what happens when you let the people do their dance upon your image. That's kind of what we're talking about, you know, setting the stage but there is something else that you do need to learn to kind of maximize that chance once you have that stage in place. Throughout the wedding day there are a couple of, you know, fairly typical events. The father of the bride seeing his daughter in her dress for the first time of that nervousness outside while they're waiting to go in, you know, everybody's inside the church, you know, that wedding march is going to start. The exchange of rings and often, oh, you know, there's some nerves there so they can't quite get the ring on. There's always laughs and things like the first kiss, the first stars. All these rituals that occur at a wedding taught me about a skill. There's actually two parts to it. It's timing and anticipation but I couldn't really, I can't really make a single word, a Tim and suspension or something like that. It sounds like everything. If you can like combine the two, you know, in the comments but that is the skill that will make or break a shot. Having those two ideas in your head and the weddings was so useful to do that because you would see moments play out again and again and again so you learned to anticipate them and you also learned about the split timing in them, the very specific timing. The decisive moment is so elusive because if you take the picture too early, the moment that stand-up moment hasn't happened yet. If you take it too late then that moment has passed. So it's about just waiting until the apex or that thing happens and then it because that's the skill that Cartier-Bresson had. It's got nothing to do with, you know, lots of theoretical stuff or what have you. It is simply about being able to anticipate that moment and being ready for it and just letting it, just before it tips over the edge. You can see why it's so subtle, why it's so tricky to find, why, why Cartier-Bresson is talking about this velvet glove that it's just like, you know, you want to, you want that decisive moment just to land like a butterfly on your hand as you take it. It is so important to learn that rhythm of the air and the flow, like, you know, with that gentleman standing outside the metro station in Chicago, you know, to anticipate things. See if there are things that people do time and time again. Is there a pothole? Is there a puddle? Is there something? Is there something that, you know, is continuous, that you can go, ah, I'm getting a feeling for the dance that is all playing around me. And I've got more of an idea about the steps that are going on within that particular dance. I was talking to somebody the other day during, again, another mentoring session. We were talking about, you know, the shooting large format film. He was saying that, you know, the camera's like 300 quid, so nothing. But then the sheets of film, like seven pounds of sheets, I mean, so we decided maybe that was probably like a kind of an expensive thing to pursue. But it brought into focus about how in the modern world these techniques, these applications of encouraging the decisive moment to come to us, to play out in our pictures, has been overlooked in favor of just machine gunning everything in sight with the hope that one of them is going to be, you know, the decisive moment. You can't get a decisive moment like that because you're ignoring all of the aspects that need to be in place for it to happen. You can't just walk through a street with your motor drive bellowing away and think, well, I'll get something later on. You can't just film things in 4K and pick out a certain still image frame and expect that to be a thing. No, you need to put all these elements together. You need to be aware of everything around you. If you're out in a landscape because you can't have decisive moments in a landscape, you know, something might happen, an animal might come into things, something like that. When you are aware of the sway of the trees, of the drift, of the clouds, of the things that are all around you, then you impart that into your image. You impart that into your, the soul in your photograph. When I look at Cartier Brisson's work, that's what I think elevates. And not because he had this, this knack, if you want to call it, of capturing single little moments and stuff like that, but because everything else comes together as well. I know there was one picture that was kind of one of the first that I was shown as an idea of the decisive moment, which is a group of people by a river and the gentleman in the foreground. He's turned around and he's pouring out some wine. People are like, look at that. That's the decisive moment. Wow, that's what makes this picture great. And at the time it was kind of like, okay, all right, I don't really get it. But later on, when I saw more of Cartier Brisson's work and I've seen more of other people's work, that you kind of go, ah, okay, I understand now. I understand how all of these things is not just about that single one thing. It's about everything that comes together to work. We lose that when we just machine gun our way through photography. It's interesting that there are in photography, you know, some really huge names. And often they have a musical background attached to them. And I think I saw a word that seemed to just make sense when you talk about photography about, you know, there is a language of music and there was a language of photography. In photography, you can make a symphony of elements. It's a wonderful turn of phrase that, you know, when you have your, you being engaged with all the things in the scene, about being present, about being aware, about using the technique that I told you earlier, I alluded to. And that is using your ears. You should be so open to using your ears. There's one thing that people never really think about in photography because it's a visual medium that at a wedding, I would sit there and I go, ah, you know, there's something going on. I remember I'd been at a wedding in Bournemouth and it was a very fancy place. It was in somebody's house that everybody's modern buildings and they had a marquee in the background. And I was out the front of the house having a break because it had a long meal service. And they told me, I, do you know, the first dance is going to be like in an hour or so. And then there's all this cheering and shouting and stuff going on. And at a wedding, that cheering and shouting signifies only one thing. So, like, ran. It's great because unfortunately, the house wasn't that big, you know, and of course, they'd started their first dance just randomly. This wasn't even close to an hour. So that was a wonderful example of you need to use your ears. Listen. You as a street photographer, as any kind of photographer, if you're looking, if you're hunting for that decisive moment, you need to be open to the unpredictability of being present, of being aware, of embracing the chaos and the randomness and beauty of life as it unfolds before you. I feel the decisive moment works at a much higher level when you also understand the language of photography, of the words that you can use to create that stage on which to let that moment dance and hopefully be caught by your camera. If you want to find out more about how you can use that language in your own images to convey meaning, then check out this video over here. Thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.