“Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), a French photographer who is considered to be one of the fathers of photojournalism and masters of candid photography. He sought to capture the ‘everyday’ in his photographs and took great interest in recording human activity. He wrote,
“For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”
The Decisive Moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s influential publication, is widely considered to be one of the most important photobooks of the twentieth century. Pioneering for its emphasis on the photograph itself as a unique narrative form, The Decisive Moment was described by Robert Capa as “a Bible for photographers.” Originally titled Images à la Sauvette (“images on the run”) in the French, the book was published in English with a new title, The Decisive Moment, which unintentionally imposed the motto which would define Cartier-Bresson’s work. The exhibition details how the decisions made by the collaborators in this major project—including Cartier-Bresson, French art publisher Tériade, American publisher Simon & Schuster, and Henri Matisse, who designed the book’s cover—have shaped our understanding of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs.
The Decisive Moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s influential publication, is widely considered to be one of the most important photobooks of the twentieth century. Pioneering for its emphasis on the photograph itself as a unique narrative form, The Decisive Moment was described by Robert Capa as “a Bible for photographers.” Originally titled Images à la Sauvette (“images on the run”) in the French, the book was published in English with a new title, The Decisive Moment, which unintentionally imposed the motto which would define Cartier-Bresson’s work. The exhibition details how the decisions made by the collaborators in this major project—including Cartier-Bresson, French art publisher Tériade, American publisher Simon & Schuster, and Henri Matisse, who designed the book’s cover—have shaped our understanding of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs.
Here the decisive moment is described:
“If a photograph is to communicate its subject in all its intensity, the relationship of form must be rigorously established. Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality… In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form.”
Image analysis:
This image taken by Cartier-Bresson is composed as a dejected image with a clear subject of a person. I believe that this image is successful as it focuses on a natural, common everyday scene, which draws the viewer in forcing us to question why the photo was taken and which message is the artist trying to get across. From a first glance I can gather that Bresson is presenting a mood of sorrow, which is also inferred through the black and white filter and the use of a puddle also adds to the melancholy. This is because the puddle reflects the man in the foreground’s shadow, which essentially exaggerates his loneliness. Similarly, there is also a man in the background who is also by himself and looks as if he is looking at nothing, implying he is deep within his thoughts. In addition to this, the size of the puddle could also suggest misery as it implies that it has been raining, which we can rightfully associate with sadness. Another effective element in the image is the ladder as it is lying down and not standing up, which shows that there has clearly been a storm, perhaps suggesting people should not be outside.
In addition to this, the way Bresson has taken the photo is practical because a slow shutter speed has been used, giving the image a candid effect. This is an important technique in street photography as it tells us that the subjects behaviours are not changing for the purpose of the image. This helps the outcome look more realistic and believable for the viewer, which makes us feel sympathetic towards the subject. I like how the background is in focus, as we can assume that Bresson’s attention was drawn to the background rather than the foreground.
These photos were taken in st Malo, and the aim of this photoshoot was to get a perspective of what French people look like on a busy day, what they get up too, it also shows us how differently they are dressed. Most of the time you wouldn’t see anyone in Jersey or England wearing this type of style as it is quite European. However, it also gives us an insight of what st Malo looks like in general and how different it can look to where we live and what we see on a regular day. There were flags all around the towns which is something we could see in jersey, but they are places differently and represent different things, but in jersey we do have some string lights around the avenue which lights around the places.
The aim of these photos are very different as some of them have many people scattered around the photo and some tend to have less or no people, I really like have some of these photos turned out, for some of the photos I used different angles to see if I could get a difference in perspective an how different the photo would look to the rest, we have a hip angle which would make the photo look lower, I also tried to put my camera further u to try and get a birds eye view perspective which didn’t turn out too well as I couldn’t really see what I was taking but it was fun to try and experiment with and see what different views people tend to see on a daily whether they were higher up looking out a window and just walking through the town.
These photos were taken in France, st Malo. The aim of this photoshoot was to take candid photos of strangers roaming the streets, it was to captivate what st Malo rally looked like without making it look staged. These pictures are very different to what we would see in our everyday life in Jersey, as we don’t have access to everything. Here we were changing the shutter speed lower and higher when cars and people were walking and some photos turned out better than others, for this photoshoot we tried to get a close up of people to see what they were doing, some of these photos were taken of only buildings with no people in the surroundings. Both those photos give a very different effect and create a sense of humanity, how the world is seen.I turned some of my photos into black and white to show that I have included some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ideas and his decisive moment. Henri has a theory of the decisive moment which meant that every picture he took had to be perfectly positioned and timed. Henri would always search for the perfect people to take a picture of, as they would most likely be walking or moving slightly making it challenging, therefore Henri would have to change the shutter speed to capture the perfect photograph. All of these photos are candid and not staged which helps to get a perspective of the real world around us, although these photos don’t define the whole world as there is war around us but there are still peaceful places which need to be kept and preserved.
This photo shows the decisive moment as we are capturing a picture that isn’t staged and have the right shutter speed added. Although a lady is walking into the frame making the people less visible due to the umbrella, I really like the way the man is still in focus of the photo and isn’t looking at the camera but still looking in the same direction of me, this gives me a perspective of what the person may be looking at. I really like the way the lady is walking into the photo almost leading us to look at the man, the dimensions in this photo.
I feel the photo looks good in black and white as lighting works well. There aren’t many colours to distract you from the view and it helps to see the details more clearly. The black and white effect makes the photo look nostalgic and adds a saddened look to it almost as if something was going on, but only the people in the photo would realize. This makes the photograph look mysterious. I also really like how the plastic looks in the photo, it gives off a vibe as if it was rain falling, it would make sense if it was rain as the lady in the picture is holding an umbrella.It also looks like the lady is covering the man with her umbrella due to the dimensions of the photograph. The umbrella makes a good prop in the photo as it takes over a big amount of the photo without blocking anyone’s face. The older man’s face is slightly covered by the bottom of the umbrella, but it is still clear to identify who the person is and what he looks like.
Evaluation:
Overall, going to St Malo was quite successful as when going round St Malo I was able to see a big difference from jersey, the people were dressed differently and it was really lively. The was music playing all over the place and there were loads of food stands. As St Malo was so different from jersey I found it quite easy to take pictures as everything was quite unusual to me, my aim was to take some landscape photos around St Malo as the architecture is different, the culture in general creates good images. When taking pictures of people, it wool have been best to take pictures of them not knowing but a lot of the time they would look up at my camera and feel quite disturbed. I do feel that as the cultures are so different, people are doing different things, for example I saw a man sat outside the shops drinking his coffee, he seemed to be a worker at the shop he was sat at, which is something you wouldn’t see in Jersey, I also saw homeless people all over the place sat outside shops with dogs around them, this is definitely something I wouldn’t see in jersey and helps to have a different perspective on life. I do like how most of my images turned out and when I edited them they looked a lot better as I had levelled the lighting. However when taking my images I should have had different view points to show the that view points matter a lot when taking pictures.
One thing I wish I had done would have been going into random shops or shops that attracted my attention and asked the people in the shop to pose with their shop, although this wouldn’t have been a candid image, it would have been very different from other peoples work as we all followed each other and went to the same places, which made out photos very similar. However, when editing my images, I did try and find new ideas to make them more unique and different from everyone else.
For my Final presentation of images from Anthropocene, I covered a variety of examples of how time affects environments of war.
In my images I covered the difference of technology over time, how areas of heavily fortified positions are now tourist attractions and how much they’re environment surrounding them has change.
These edited photos here, aim to show the effects of Anthropocene of war, how despite Technology advances, Battlefields change, the image of war remains the same. In the case of these images that message stands strong as despite the original images being taken over 100 years ago, in comparison to the modern images in only recent years, the actions, jobs and methods still are the same.
These Images aim to show the ideological aspect of Anthropocene. Although time passes from these past periods of conflict, their marks on history remain today with use of these images from their time.
These images show the local effects of Anthropocene, from Jerseys wartime occupation, where these locations where of military value and heavily defended, to now, an industry that thrives of its history through tourism. Areas featured like Elizabeth castle, or Corbiere where chosen by me as I thought, how they both massively changed in environmental purpose and were a clear sign of human impact on the world, so locally to me.
Here is where we went and where I took all my photos. We walked all within the walls and focused on the environment and the historical parts of St Malo. We also spent some time looking at all the people within St Malo enjoying their days and we captured in the moment photographs.
Contact Sheet
Best Images Selection
TheDecisiveMomentCaféStatueArchitectureHistory
Here are what I would believe to be some of my best images, each individual one captures a different moment in time, some are of people and capturing what actions they are doing whilst going about their day however some others are images of the old historical architecture of St Malo which I had managed to nicely capture within my photoshoot.
I think my final images came out well and they have been edited well. However, I prefer the St saviours hospital photos more, because they have better lighting. Next time, I would visit Bouley Bay again, but when its lighter, so that the images come out less dark. However, I did edit the images well, to increase the exposure. This was the lighting in the images before the editing:
I also like have I have sets of images that go together with both the St Saviour’s hospital and Bouley Bay.
Greenhouse
Analysis
I love the images of the smaller greenhouse, because it presents what’s inside the greenhouse very well and has a good composition. It also has good contrast between the green of the grass and the dull dirt on the greenhouse walls and the colour of the greenhouse.
The image at Trinity is a good photo, but it was quite dark when the photos were taken, so if I were to do this again I would visit Trinity again, but when it is lighter, so the lighting is better. However, I edited the image well, so it had more exposure.
The images of the larger greenhouse are very vibrant and there is lots of green colours, which pop and make the image much more eye appealing. These images also have good lighting and composition.
If I were to ever photograph greenhouses again, I would love to experiment with flash lights and different coloured gels more, when the sun is starting to set, because I think the images would turn out very good, but when I tried it this time it was very difficult to make it work, so I will have to be more prepared with a plan and bigger, more powerful flashlight.
Discarded Plastic
Analysis
I liked the discarded plastic photoshoot and thought the rubbish looked good against the black background and really stood out. However, if I were to do this again I’d want to collect more rubbish and place the camera further away so I can make larger patterns with my colour coordinated litter.
The single item images came out well, as it made them stand out lots and be more eye appealing, especially against the black background.
Litter
Analysis
I liked the photoshoot of litter found on the beach, because it really presented how much litter there is in these natural environments, which habitat animals. However, if I were to do this next time I would remember to put a card in my camera, so that the images had better quality. I would also experiment more, so there were no shadows of my phone or camera.
Industrialisation
Analysis
I really liked this industrialisation photoshoot, because it allowed me to explore different places, and it allowed me to explore how industrialisation has changed and developed over time. It also showed me how many built up places there are in Jersey, never mind the rest of the world. It also gave me an idea of how the world is developing and what it is going to be like in the future.
Fly Tipping
Analysis
My images showed fly tipping very well, as there were lots of furniture items that were just discarded. I also enjoyed this photoshoot, because I didn’t think that fly tipping happened that often in Jersey, but this photoshoot really opened my eyes.
Minimalistic Approach
Analysis
I really enjoyed this photoshoot, because these images show how there are smaller pieces of litter, such as cigarettes, which do effect the earth, because there are so many of them, but people do not really notice this, or worry about it, when it does actually have a huge impact and I think this photoshoot presents this. If I were to do this photoshoot again, I would use a camera instead of my phone, so that the quality is better.
For my final photos, I think that they have all worked very well. My work shows the issues around the world, that Anthropocene focus’ on. My photoshoots and edits were done to the best of my ability and came out better then what I had envisioned.
I was only disappointed with one of my photos and that would be the one that was inspired by the Marilyn Monroe collage. I feel that those photos could have had more effort put into them as well as the editing that followed. That photo was definitely rushed and if I spend more time and allowed myself to put a little bit more effort into it it would have came out exactly how id like it too.
My pollution photos, with the rubbish and the plastic bags, I felt really portrayed not only the theme of Anthropocene, but the emotions and issues that are caused by the poor actions we make as the human race. The planning that went into the portrait photos was very in-depth and that really worked to my advantage for this photoshoot.
The photos including the animals worked incredibly too, I felt that it would be good to include animals because sometimes people forget that the issues that are caused by us don’t only effect us but it effects every living thing that is around us as well. So including the animal ( snake ), really helps shed light and share that information so that people could understand, and I could spread awareness on that separate issue that we have caused.
He was a French artist, and considered a master of candid photography. He pioneered the genre of street photography. He was one of the founding member’s of Magnum photos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_Photos) but discontinued most of his images and opted to paint instead. “Photography isn’t just about images; it’s about capturing the essence of existence.” Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup, France, and began his career as a journalist and photographer in the 1930s. He served in the French Resistance during World War II, using his photography skills to document the war effort.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Cartier-Bresson became known for his innovative approach to photography, which emphasized capturing the essence of a moment or scene in a single frame. He believed that photography should be a way to reveal the human condition, rather than simply documenting reality. He coined the term “decisive moment” to describe this concept, which refers to the fleeting instant when all the elements of a scene come together to create a powerful and meaningful image.
The decisive moment.
The book Cartier-Bresson penned in 1952, in French, was called Images à la Sauvette (“Images on the Run”). It was quite literally about taking pictures in a dynamic and moving world. He used the term “decisive moment” in his writing, with very specific meaning, but the term was appropriated as the title in the English translation.
For Cartier-Bresson, the decisive moment was not just about capturing a specific event or action, but rather about capturing the essence of the human experience.
Some key characteristics of the decisive moment include:
A sense of tension or drama
A feeling of anticipation or movement
A strong sense of human connection or interaction
A balance of shapes, lines, and textures
A sense of depth or layering
A strong emotional resonance
Timing: The ability to capture the exact moment when something significant was happening.
Composition: The way the elements of the scene were arranged to create a harmonious and balanced composition.
Light: The quality and direction of the light, which could add mood and atmosphere to the image.
Storytelling: The ability to tell a story or convey a sense of narrative through the image.
The decisive moment is not limited to specific subjects or genres, but can be applied to various forms of photography, including street photography, portrait photography, landscape photography, and more.
Examples Mood board –
What is a decisive moment.
A decisive moment generally cannot be re-create. It is a moment in time, it can be planned in a way that the photographer may wait for someone to walk past a specific structured place, where he has set up his camera perfectly. A decisive moment is also sometimes described as a miracle accident, something that wasn’t entirely planned but turned out amazing. An example of the decisive moment would be taking photos of a couple engaging in a romantic gesture, now if you were to ask the couple if you could take the photo it would change the way they act and therefore it wouldn’t end up being the same raw moment it once was. This is the whole point of a decisive moment, a moment before people change their behaviour and how they act, being just natural and just them.
Henri Cartier Bresson viewed photography in a special way
Photography as a way to capture the human experience: Cartier-Bresson believed that photography should be used to capture the essence of human experience, to tell stories about people, and to reveal the human condition.
Photography as a momentary capture: He emphasized the importance of capturing a single moment, often referred to as the “decisive moment,” when all the elements of a scene come together to create a powerful image.
Photography as a means to reveal the unconscious: Cartier-Bresson believed that photography could reveal the unconscious aspects of human behavior, revealing hidden truths and emotions.
Photography as an act of observation: He emphasized the importance of observing and waiting for the right moment, rather than staging or manipulating scenes.
Photography as a form of storytelling: Cartier-Bresson saw photography as a way to tell stories about people, places, and cultures, often using a series of images rather than a single frame.
Photography as an art form: He believed that photography was an art form that required creativity, skill, and intuition, and that it should be judged on its artistic merit rather than technical quality.
Photography as a reflection of reality: Cartier-Bresson believed that photography should reflect reality, but also acknowledged that it is always subjective and influenced by the photographer’s perspective.
Photography as a way to transcend time and space: He believed that photography could capture moments in time and spaces that would otherwise be lost, allowing us to transcend time and space.
Photography as a means to connect with others: Cartier-Bresson saw photography as a way to connect with others, to understand their lives and experiences, and to create empathy and understanding.
Leica rangefinder with a 50mm lens.
Henri Cartier Bresson was known for using a Leica rangefinder with a 50mm lens because, these cameras were compact, reliable and their design was very discrete and more hidden to the naked eye than other cameras of the era. This allowed him to take images without disrupting the moment. He also used the Leica rangefinder because of it’s stealth, quiet shutter which allowed sneaky photos to be taken without drawing attention. This silent tactic was crucial for someone who believed in capturing natural, realistic, authentic, upstaged moments.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, born 22nd august 1908 in Chanteloup-en-Brie, France, was and still is considered the master of candid photography and a humanist. Cartier-Bresson is well know for his theory of the decisive moment. Coming from a wealthy family, he was introduce to art from a young age and had an affinity for painting, however, photography soon took over that love and adoration. When he was younger he travelled around Europe and Africa, with his camera, learning about different lives and cultures. this helped him shape and mould his philosophy “the decisive moment”.
The decisive moment
He always had his camera on him waiting for that “decisive moment”. The decisive moment is described as “the exact instance when a unique event is captured by the photographer – when something that may never happen again is frozen in the frame.” Cartier-Bresson published a book in 1952, in which the concept is widely explored.
The camera
Henri Cartier-Bresson was know for using the Leica Rangefinder with a 50mm lens. Cartier-Bresson preferred this camera to any other camera as it was small and inconspicuous, this allowed him to create beautiful photos without disrupting the people he was photographing them. The quite shutter sped also helped with the discreetness of his photos. The camera itself was small and easy to work with and there for no disruptive to the people in the photos. The lens was favoured as it create images that were closest to the eye.
How does Henri Cartier-Bresson view the activity of photography?
Cartier-Bresson describes the activity of photography as “physical pleasure” and states that it is almost “like hunting” without actually “killing”
The lens is described as an extenuation of the eye.
He describes it about being “here and now” and about being in the moment.
It is about freezing a moment of time in place.
The Gare Saint-Lazare
Take in 1932 of a man leaping over a puddle, behind the station. The well known station from one of Claude Monet’s paintings. The energy of Monet’s painting is more busy and you can almost picture the trains moving and people going back and forth, starkly contrasting the simplicity of the Cartier-Bresson’s photo, shows life as it was and is strangely calm.
Claude Monet’s the Gare saint-Lazare
The leading lines follow the top of the fence and the reflection of the top of the fence. This helps to bring the onlookers eye to the leaping man. This also brings attention to the man in the centre of the photo, which might not have been noticed otherwise.
The balance and the symmetry of the clock tower and the reflection of the man show the how the reflection and the tower are one in the same.
The rule of thirds places the leaping man in the centre right quadrant of the photo this frames him in place. This eases the eye on to him. if this were not the case and he were in the left of the photo, the man would be at the start of his jump. This would change the photo, in this instance we would be able to see where the man would be going to, the ripples in the water would disappear.
The negative space at the to and bottom of the photo helps to cement the idea that this is a frame of time that has been frozen, forever to remain a fragment of a life time before ours.
Black and white holds a soul that is missed in coloured images. this was not an editing choice to put the photo in black and white. the lack of colour allows for the eye to focus on more detailed and deeper elements of the photo. the earthy texture and the poster on the wall helps the viewer to appreciate the environment and feel as though they are there.
It is very likely that Cartier-Bresson used a smaller aperture to create a bigger depth of field and have everything in focus. He would also have used a faster shutter speed, this can be see where the leaping man is fuzzy however he is non in a major motion blur.
The natural midday sun, normally a pain for other photographers, is one of Cartier-Bresson greatest strengths. The high, bright sun created high a contrast and highlighted the mans reflection and despite being blurry is one of the clearest and vivid visuals of this photo.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities. On its own or combined with other technologies, AI can perform tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence or intervention. As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have been scrambling to promote how their products and services use it. Often, what they refer to as AI is simply a component of the technology, such as machine learning. AI requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states. In this way, a chatbot that is fed examples of text can learn to generate lifelike exchanges with people, or an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images by reviewing millions of examples. New, rapidly improving generative AI techniques can create realistic text, images, music and other media.
AI programming focuses on cognitive skills that include the following:
Learning. This aspect of AI programming focuses on acquiring data and creating rules for how to turn it into actionable information.
Reasoning. This aspect of AI programming focuses on choosing the right algorithm to reach a desired outcome.
Self-correction. This aspect of AI programming is designed to continually fine-tune algorithms and ensure they provide the most accurate results possible.
Creativity. This aspect of AIuses neural networks, rules-based systems, statistical methods and other AI techniques to generate new images, new text, new music and new ideas.
AI is important for its potential to change how we live, work and play. It has been effectively used in business to automate tasks done by humans, including customer service work, lead generation, fraud detection and quality control. In a number of areas, AI can perform tasks much better than humans. Particularly when it comes to repetitive, detail-oriented tasks. AI tools often complete jobs quickly and with relatively few errors. Because of the massive data sets it can process, AI can also give enterprises insights into their operations they might not have been aware of. The rapidly expanding population of generative AI tools will be important in fields ranging from education and marketing, to product design.
Advantages of AI:
Good at detail-oriented jobs. AI has proven to be just as good, if not better than doctors at diagnosing certain cancers.
Reduced time for data-heavy tasks. AI is widely used in data-heavy industries, including banking and securities, pharma and insurance, to reduce the time it takes to analyse big data sets.
Saves labour and increases productivity. An example here is the use of warehouse automation, which grew during the pandemic and is expected to increase with the integration of AI and machine learning.
Delivers consistent results. The best AI translation tools deliver high levels of consistency, offering even small businesses the ability to reach customers in their native language.
Can improve customer satisfaction through personalization. AI can personalize content, messaging, ads, recommendations and websites to individual customers.
AI-powered virtual agents are always available. AI programs do not need to sleep or take breaks, providing 24/7 service.
Disadvantages of AI:
Expensive.
Requires deep technical expertise.
Limited supply of qualified workers to build AI tools.
Reflects the biases of its training data, at scale.
Lack of ability to generalize from one task to another.
Eliminates human jobs, increasing unemployment rates.
My experimentation with AI:
Past:
I chose these objects to add into my experimentation of the past because they provided the first means of fast travel. This sped up migration, trade, and communication between cultures. I also added a black and white filter as it is known to make people feel nostalgic.
Present:
My reasoning for adding a man on his phone is because today’s society has brought technology into every aspect of our life, and has changed the way we behave and operate. In the background I placed another two people with shopping bags to add to the modernized affect.
Future:
For the future I added robots because in the last 10 years we have seen a significant increase in advanced technology, with many businesses beginning to replace humans with robots.
My virtual Gallery:
Step 1: Adding my past image
Step 2: Adding my present image
Step 3: Adding my future image and a drop shadow to each frame to give a 3D effect, which adds a sense of realism.
To display my final images, I laid them in a virtual gallery in chronological order so it is easy to interpret the differences between them.
The running man is the main focus, as if the shot was framed where the man would be on the left, there wouldn’t be any ripples, reflection of the buildings on the puddle, fallen ladder and the other objects. It would be very plain with a lot of negative space. The chimney on top of the building is also perfectly diagonal to the man’s reflection. Another use of equal spacing and no negative space.
About taking the Photo. He used a small aperture to capture the in-focus from the for-ground to the background. Used a fast shutter speed to capture the jumping man, even though he is a little out of focus and blurry, for taking it back in 1930, that is amazing and he is basically in focus. The photo relies on natural light, and the shadows suggest that it was taken during midday when the sun was glaring and high in the sky. The natural light adds an authentic, unmediated quality to the image, free from shadows an fake lighting.
The photo being in black and white was not by choice, in 1930s you could only take photos in black and white and so he was limited to that but the photo looked better in black and white than colour anyway, so in a way it helped Bresson. Without colour, it makes the viewers focus more on the subject and what’s happening in the photo and makes the texture become more pronounced. You can feel the environment from the surroundings for example, worn-out posters on the walls, waters surface and the grainy quality of the wet ground. Typically, photographers don’t like taking photos during midday sun due to the amount of glare, harshness and the strong shadows it can create. However, Cartier-Bresson embraced this photo with the sharp shadows to create geometric shapes and add depth. The sun’s angle and position created the vivid reflection’s in the puddle of the buildings, man and other objects.
Introduction: Henry was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film but preferred the 50mm lens.
He was known for humane, spontaneous photographs helped establish photojournalism as an art form.
His background: He was born into a wealthy family in France, and was introduced from an early age into arts. He started off with painting, but quickly realised he has a passion for photography which he saw as an add-on from painting with an extension of his eye.
Henri realised he could interact with the world using this tool/camera and travelled frequently from Europe to Africa to see and take in each different culture.
“Photography isn’t just about images; it’s about capturing the essence of existence.”
‘The Decisive Moment’ This means a visually pleasing image is combined with deeper meaning by capturing the very essence of what was happening when the shutter is pressed.
Henri Cartier Bresson was known for using a Leica rangefinder with a 50mm lens because: These cameras were compact, reliable and their design was very discrete and more hidden to the naked eye than other cameras of the era. This allowed him to take quick snapshots with using an unobtrusive shooting style which is ideal for street photography.
Another main reason he used the Leica rangefinder was because of it’s stealth, quiet shutter which allowed sneaky photos to be taken without drawing attention, allowing life to unfold naturally through his lens. This silent tactic was crucial for someone who believed in capturing natural, realistic, authentic, unstaged moments. It also allows a new field of view to his photos.
One of the standout features is the use of leading lines/rule of thirds.
The railings are in line with the top line for the rule of thirds, both physical and shadowed, act as arrows, pointing directly at the main subject. Even the subtle lines in the water and the contours of the puddle help direct the viewer’s gaze towards the man. Also, the use of negative space with nothing going on in the top third of the photo and not really the bottom left area, helps direct our eyes towards the subject in the middle and where all the action and focus is.
Balance – The reflection from the man onto the puddle creates an almost yin-yang feel where the reality and its reflection coexist and perfectly are in opposite which creates a better look and a more natural look for the photo.
