Special Moments

On 14 June, I photographed the awards ceremony of the European Literary Award in Cape Town. It’s the second time in a row that I was asked to cover the event. I felt honored that I was selected again. The award is sponsored by the European Union (hence the name) and Jacana Media, a South African publisher.
I decided this year to work mostly with available light and my 50mm/1.4 lens. Without a flash going off every other moment, I got closer to people and had a chance to capture some very special moments. I learnt a lesson during this assignment. Even though, I was there to photograph the pictures, my client requested, those images are not always the most important pictures for my development as photographer. Henri Cartier-Bresson coined the expression of the “decisive moment”. In my interpretation it is the moment, which embodies the essence of the moment. Cartier-Bresson mastered it. In many of his images, you find humor and wisdom, only because he pressed the shutter right then. He has always been one of the great artists of photography.
Well, during the award ceremony, I took a photograph of the crowd and as you can see in the following picture, this lady, noticed me and smiled. Instinctively, I took the picture and captured that smile in this “decisive moment”.
I find it amazing, when you try to understand a concept, get a grasp of it theoretically and then suddenly just apply it and are surprised that you just did it. I had some moments in my life as photographer, where got it right with this concept and others, but it always feels new.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 22:11 and is filed under Blog and tagged with General, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.