Decisive Moments

When we talk about street photography, the first thing that comes to our mind is "the decisive moment", which was made famous by the grand master Henri Cartier-Bresson. It can be waiting for the right subject to enter a particular part of your frame or capturing a candid photo of someone who was in the midst of doing something that you found interesting. 

I used to think that "the decisive moment" was a one shot kind of thing, hence the name. But after I learned more about street photography through videos and by reading up, I realized that that was not the case. More often than not, it's waiting patiently for the right subject to come into frame, and that means taking more than one shot. You can take a dozen of photos of the same spot but with different subjects, and only filter out the "decisive moment" photo afterwards. So far, these are my 3 best "decisive moment" shots. 

The first one (above) was inspired by Vincent Laforet when he was on DigitalRev's "Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera Challenge". 
"Things tend to happen in patterns" and "Sometimes you can just imagine something is gonna happen there, and sometimes, you just have to wait for it." Two quotes I picked up from just that video. Two very simple sentences, but it taught me a lot about photography. And maybe, it could be of help to you as well! 

The bottom two photos were taken because of the great light and shadows. I had quite a bit of difficulty taking the second photo (directly below) because I had to wait for someone to walk past that small pathway where the light was entering and I wanted to make sure there were no cars at the back either. I took quite a number of shots before I finally got this. 

It's not always that easy to get the desired shot, and if there's one thing that I've learned - it's that it takes lots of practice. Only after doing it countless of times, can one start predicting "decisive moments" and knowing exactly what kind of subject and framing one wants on the street. I'm not there yet, but I hope to be half as good as Henri Cartier-Bresson one day. 

Keeping A Bit Of The Past

Does anyone in Singapore still remember these Pokemon erasers from their primary school years? They were a huge part of my primary school life (as you can see from the large amount of erasers I have). I'm not sure if any of you played with these erasers the same way my school did, but we would take one eraser each and flip until one gets on top of the other completely. It sounds like a very simple game, but it was one of the few fun things we got to do in school when lessons got boring. I can still remember the nervousness and excitement that followed with each flip, the tense atmosphere of uncertainty that lasted a split second when the eraser was between staying on top and falling off. It's become a game of the past now, but the joy of this simple game still lingers, while the erasers serve as a time machine for me to reminisce this joy. 

It's been a decade since I got my first Pokemon eraser and I'm planning to keep them for a few more decades, in hopes of keeping a bit of the past with me in the fast, ever growing technological society.