Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/07/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Johnny Deadman wrote: > My standard focus distance is 5-8 feet. No-one has pulled a gun on me. > > What can I tell you, except to paraphrase Szarkowski: the hardest thing in > photography is not capturing the 'decisive moment', it's getting > the film on the reel. My experiences, limited as they are to just three months with an M6 and three dozen rolls of film, have already begun to bear this out. I've been surprised (at times, astonished) at just how close I can get to people while photographing and not elicit a reaction. The key, in my case, seems to be my own attitude. If I am relaxed and shooting spontaneously--not being sneaky, but not being obtrusive, either--just snapping away, shifting, snapping--no big deal--then my "subjects" mirror this same relaxed stance. Actually, they cease being subjects and become an integral part of a process. We are all active participants in this process, and we share this common ground--the same light. There's nothing special about it, and so it doesn't provoke defenses. What's special is not the subject nor the photographer, but the quality of seeing itself--when it is unencumbered by all these (false) divisions and judgments. This quality of seeing has a way of exposing an extraordinary beauty in the ordinary. We aren't photographers, but alchemists, transmuting light into silver, the silver of this moment, which is the only decisive moment there is. Dan