Decisive moment

The decisive moment was a phrase first coined by the late Henri Cartier-Bresson to describe the precise moment when everything in a scene comes together. In his own words “Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.” There are various ways of capturing that decisive moment. One way is to just keep shooting a scene over and over trying different compositions and working with the subjects until you feel you have your shot, sometimes only realising which one was the decisive moment when you look back through the images after the event. Another involves having quick reactions and an intuition about what will happen next. Any sort of social reportage photography involves an element of psychology. Understanding human behaviour definitely goes some way to helping predict when these moments might present themselves.