Henri Cartier-Bresson has been famously quoted as to how one must capture "the decisive moment," and as this post argues, what HCB meant by that phrase is very different from how it has largely been interpreted. To summarize, Cartier-Bresson was talking about how, in a world full of movement, you have to wait for the right composition to appear within the camera's frame and capture that. This is not the same as (though it may lead to) waiting for that 'meaningful' moment before snapping the release, which is how his phrase has come to be commonly understood.

A friend of mine, Dave Mullen (whose photographs can be seen here), sent me a link to this YouTube video of Tony Vaccarro and his work, in which he talks about the 'right moment.' His take is that it is when what's inside your head connects with what you see, and he attributes his success as a photographer to being patient enough to wait for it. But he does not, in this video, explain what he means by 'patience,' nor how this leads to a great photo.

I remember watching Kristi Odom speak, and she showed several photos of Alaskan grizzlies that were breathtaking in their poignancy and feel for her subject. In talking about how she came to capture them, she casually mentioned that she had stood around waiting on this viewing platform, which I think she described as being the size of the average American bathroom, for eleven hours.

It's not just patience, of course. The photo has to point at something; it can't just be the composition itself, or some sort of unseen synchronicity between what the image depicts and some neurons in your head. I'm not discounting abstracts images. Fine art went through this phase when it let go of the need to depict something, even something unintelligible to the average viewer and said no, it's fine to be just paint on a canvas. But even abstractions need to conjure something other than themselves - a satisfied smile, perhaps, at geometries which reconcile themselves.

In short, the photograph is rightly called a medium, as it points us to something which it is not; a mood we can sense and recall, a quick quiver of awe or even disgust. There has to be that object a viewer recognizes, even if it is their own bewilderment. A recognition of our shared humanity.

How can this happen? I think it's when we, as the photographer, allow our ego to get stripped out of the process, and channel the thing as it is - whatever that thing may be.