Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/05/25

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Subject: [Leica] The Critic
From: PetersonAG at NAVSEA.NAVY.MIL (Peterson Arthur G NSSC)
Date: Tue May 25 10:39:42 2004

If I recall, HCB had a characteristically comprehensive and elegant
definition of, for him, the decisive moment.  I wish I could come up with it
right now, to quote it here, but sorry to say, I just don't have it at hand.
Maybe someone else knows what I'm referring to?

Art


-----Original Message-----
From: B. D. Colen [mailto:bdcolen@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 13:23
To: 'Leica Users Group'
Subject: RE: [Leica] The Critic

Here we go again - They weren't all "staged," but neither were virtually
any of them "decisive moments" if what you mean by decisive moment is
that in an instant he saw a photo before his eye, whipped his camera up,
and captured it in a single shot.

I take the decisive moment to be that instant when you see the
photographic possibilities in a scene or even before you, not the
instant you push the shutter release, as you may push it dozens, if not
hundreds of times around a single scene or event - which the contacts
show HCB did. He was a prodigious shooter, and he  really "worked"
scenes, bouncing around like a kangaroo on speed.

As someone once observed - was it HCB himself - the decisive moment was
the instant when he saw the image on a contact sheet.

B. D.

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
robertmeier@usjet.net
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 1:00 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] The Critic


> So Bob said:
> >>> Yes, in the right circumstances.  At just the right moment.  With 
> >>> many
> > reflections and repetitions of the motion.<<<<<<<
>
> So Bob what your saying is....
>
> Where HCB had the guy jump more than once, that's still a decisive 
> moment even though it was staged several times?
>

Ted,  no, I didn't say that, nor mean that.   The repetitions are in the
poster behind him which shows a circus performer in the same position,
roughly, that the jumper is in, and the various semi-circles in the
water (and elsewhere I remember, but I don't have the picture infront of
me) that repeat the lines of his arms, etc.

> I see that as a repetitive moment, not a decisive moment.  Any idiot 
> photographer worth his salt can have someone do an action many times 
> and eventually capture something decisive looking. Then of course over

> a 60
year
> or more span create the myth of it being caught as a one shot decisive

> moment.
>

Are you charging that HCB staged this shot?  What is the basis for your
accusation?



> I stick by my earlier comment, this picture of the critic with arms
raised,
> as we see it presented here, is as decisive a moment as the 
> re-creations
by
> HCB. Why shouldn't it be. Hell if it were presented as an HCB everyone
would
> pee their pants with "Oh man he's the greatest!"
>
A decisive moment, certainly.     But "the re-creations by HCB"?  You
think
ALL of his pictures were staged?

Bob

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See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information