Assignment 3 – – Sarah Gough OCA Blog

Brief

Create a set of between six and ten finished images on the theme of the decisive moment. You may choose to create imagery that supports the tradition of the ‘decisive moment’ or you may choose to question or invert the concept by presenting a series of ‘indecisive’ moments. Your aim isn’t to tell a story, but in order to work naturally as a series there should be a linking theme, whether it’s a location, event or particular period of time.

Approach

My initial ideas when I first started planning this assignment, was to photograph people at either an event, a busy shopping day in the village local to me, a day in the park, or even a walk around the town. At the point where I was ready to start, we were put in lockdown due to Covid-19, so that idea would have to change, as these things were no longer permitted. I was hoping to leave it a couple of weeks and be able to use the day of us coming back together as my ‘period of time’. However, we still don’t really know when that will be. Therefore, I decided my subject would be the daily exercise we have been permitted. Most days I have taken a walk up to a local country park. So, my assignment will be based on “A Woodland Walk”.

I started taking photos, as and when I found something which I could possibly use for the decisive moment. In the first few days of attempting this, I had my camera on single shoot mode. When shooting fast moving things like the squirrels, I realised this would probably be easier with a continuous shoot mode to capture that “gesture” which creates the moment. I used a 55-250mm lens to allow me to zoom as and when I needed when trying to capture the little animals I came across on these walks.

Within the woods, there were more people than usual when I started thinking about this assignment. I decided this would give me a good chance to capture their daily exercise whilst taking mine. There were so many families, dogs and the usual woodland animals (which were a little harder to capture with all the extra noise of people!), So I decided that should be my starting point. Whilst reviewing the photos, I found the shots of people to be very similar from person to person as they were all doing the same thing, just walking. That is why I decided my set should consist of the people taking their exercise – who probably wouldn’t usually be there, and the animals who would have been even if I’d done this before lockdown.

I wanted my images to capture some normality amongst the strange times we are living through. Although this daily walk may not have been something any of us did beforehand, perhaps it will be something we continue now we have learnt not to take things for granted and have maybe had the time we didn’t have before to appreciate the beauty which surrounds us in nature.

Research

From my research, I found Henri Cartier-Bresson most interesting. Being able to just see the shot. I quoted Yves Bonnefoy describing HCB as “on the lookout” and “ready to react”. I took this on board when going out to take my assignment photos by having my camera strapped on my shoulder, with the right mode and shutter speed selected, lens cap off, ready to go. My research can be found here.

Whilst taking the photos for the decisive moment, and not quite having what I wanted yet, I started looking at the next part of the course. Part four is about light. When looking on YouTube for natural light photographers, I came across Bob Holmes. A British photographer, labelled as a travel photographer due to his work for magazines such as national geographic. However, he describes himself as taking all kinds of photos, for example portraits, whilst capturing images for travel and therefore describes himself as a documentary photographer.

8 Natural Lighting Tips From National Geographic Photographer Bob Holmes (2019)

In this YouTube video, Holmes gives information about shooting in natural light. The golden hour and the blue hour. This is information I will write about for part four, as it is more relevant to that. However, he also talks of the decisive moment within his photographs. Explaining how it is “more important when you have small figures” within a frame to make sure you capture the right gestures/ bigger gestures. He says “you have to make sure that peoples legs are apart or their arms are apart. Look for that little gesture”.
Holmes goes on to say how the decisive moment exists in everything, even portraiture, as it’s the tiny details which make a photo. I thought this relevant to my work, as I have tried to capture little animals with big enough gestures.

Contact Sheets

Final Images

Reflection

I hope my selection feels like a coherent set, as they were all taken within the woods and have a feeling of nature throughout. I wanted to use the theme of our permitted daily exercise to also create that feeling. I tried to ensure all photos had greenery within them. I had originally picked a couple of different photos for my final set, however, I thought there were too many of people and they all looked pretty similar. I then went to take more photos over a few more days to get a better final set.

From my research, I was really taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s approach. I loved that he could take one shot and that would be it. When I submitted my “one square mile” assignment, a comment from my tutor was that he liked that I hadn’t taken the same frame over and over, I just took it and moved on. Perhaps that’s something I’ve moved away from whilst moving through this course, by trying to find the ‘perfect’ photo. Also after submitting ‘one square mile’ my tutor recommended I go out more than once to take photos rather than expecting to find everything in one take. I definitely found with this assignment that shooting in the same place over and over gave me so many more opportunities. I am glad I took the time day by day to have another go. Overall that let me have more images to choose from and made each walk more worthwhile knowing something different could come along. I took a few of the different routes through the woods so I had more chance of seeing something different. (My ‘One square mile’ can be found here)

While trying to get the photos for this assignment, I’ve found that I’ve had to take more than one shot to get the ‘decisive moment’. I don’t think this is the right assignment to take the one shot. Snapping something and seeing that each frame is different gives a lot of choice when looking through possible photos to submit. However, to capture the decisive moment, I felt it necessary to take multiple shots to see how the person/animal moved over that short period of time. Allowing me to capture the movement and pick the best frame.

When first shooting for this assignment, I also learnt an important lesson. When you’ve taken a photo, look back at it on the camera to check your settings are correct. Maybe do a ‘test shot’ in new light. I found that I looked through the viewfinder to take what I thought looked like a great shot, only to find out when I had walked away that the shutter speed was too fast and there was not enough light let in. Therefore the photo wasn’t usable like I’d thought, without editing the brightness afterwards. This led to me using a slower shutter speed to ensure more light was able to be captured.

I think again with this assignment, I spend too long second guessing myself. I am a serious over thinker and that makes me procrastinate with starting the physical “go out and take photos” part of the exercises and assignments. Because I over think what’s being asked of me, I spend a long time thinking about what I can do, until I think “that’s it” and decide what I’m going to do. From this, I think I need to use those thoughts as part of my learning log. At the moment, I go round and round but I my in my own head. Perhaps putting some of the thoughts on paper would make my decision making easier and inspire something different. It would also show my thought process as to how I get to what I do. I think this assignment has helped me to perhaps change my approach and I feel more prepared when going out now.

For images 5. ‘Pigeon Flying Off’ and image 7. ‘Squirrel Spotting the Camera’, I slightly adjusted the brightness to allow them to work as part of the set. I didn’t feel they looked right as they were darker than the rest. Image 4. ‘Squirrel Scratching’ was taken in landscape. I wanted to use this as part of my final set, but felt it would work better if all of my images were either landscape or portrait. Therefore, I cropped this one. I used Snapseed on iPad to do this.

The good I have taken from this assignment, is going out prepared to take photos. I have often looked at something and thought it was a good photo opportunity, but missed it because I wasn’t prepared. I hadn’t considered that I needed to change my approach before. However, since starting this assignment, I’ve found myself getting to my destination and straight away getting my camera out ready. This was down to my research on HCB. As I said, he was described as always being ready, I think that’s really important now, looking back on the amount of times I have missed something. Even at the start of shooting for this, I thought I could get my camera when I saw something, but by then it’s often too late.

When starting part three, I really struggled to find the motivation to do it. I’ve always thought of shutter speed as being the hardest technique to learn. However, I’ve enjoyed learning this new skill. I feel quite confident in this mode now, although I wouldn’t say I know it well enough to get it right every time yet. However, it does give me more confidence to move in to manual mode for part four. I haven’t shot in manual really since buying my camera. I did have a play at first but couldn’t get the right results, hopefully this will change now I’ve worked through Auto, AV & TV. Shutter priority is now a mode I feel I could use fairly confidently in the future and will look forward to doing so. With some practice I could capture better photographs.