Bruce Gilden is a street photographer who is most known for his up-close photographs of people. He was born in Brooklyn in 1946 and has received many awards including the ‘European publishers award for photography’. The main reason for him starting photography is the film ‘blowup’. Being influenced by this movie, he went and bought his first camera  and started attending night school photography classes.

He doesn’t try to be discrete at all when taking photos. He prefers to approach people and take photos of their initial reaction. He also aims to take photos of people who either stand out, or people he can portray as different.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. He was also one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947.

This idea of capturing the decisive moment can definitely be seen in this photo; if the photo was taken a fraction of a second later the person in the foreground would have stepped in the standing water, which would have caused ripples and ruined the clarity of the reflection on the water.

These two photographers are very different but they have one thing in common, they both focus on the decisive moment. For Henri Carter that is the whole frame (like described in the photo above), and for Bruce Gilden it’s the moment people react to him taking a photo of them.