Even if you’re a professional photographer, you’ll often find yourself wondering if you got the shot. You got a shot, but did you manage to capture that elusive decisive moment? The one that makes your images stand out and causes the viewer to take a longer look.

The art of photography is in the emotion, the way an image inspires and promotes feelings for its viewers. The key to capturing those emotions is the decisive moment. In this article, we look at exactly how you can capture the decisive moment in your images.

What is the Decisive Moment?

The decisive moment was made popular by the famous street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. According to him, it refers to “capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous.”

Bresson has spoken a lot about this concept. He said that “the time between observing, composing, and shooting must occur with foresight and instinct.”

This, of course, is far easier said than done, so how exactly do photographers do this to capture that perfect shot, with only seconds to get that final stand-out image?

Knowing your subjects and predicting their behaviour

Firstly, you need to observe and understand your subject to learn patterns and behaviour; the more you understand these, the better place you’ll be to predict the behaviours. Being a photographer allows you the opportunity to document the life story of people or even landscapes.

Capturing these details allows you to tell the subject’s story and the more you practice observation in this way, the easier you’ll find it to predict what’s coming next.

Developing photographer’s intuition

Without a doubt, there’s a lot of instinct and intuition involved with being a photographer. It’s your internal voice or gut feeling that you need to listen to when you see or experience something and just know, without explanation, what is going to happen next. If you learn to listen to this, you can start to use it to your advantage.

The more time you spend observing and photographing subjects such as people or animals in various situations, the easier this intuition will become.

How do you find Decisive Moments?

Emotional Moments

At the heart of a great photograph, it is the meaning that separates an amazing yet meaningless shot from a genuinely decisive moment. In order to showcase a decisive moment, you need to make sure that there is a meaningful element in the frame that makes a statement and inspires emotion.

Meaning is most often found in actions, and meaningful actions occur all around us every day. This meaning is everywhere; it just takes practice to find it in everyday moments. Start by considering what you find meaningful in your own life and experience, as this can be the easiest to identify.

For wedding photographers, a lot of what is captured throughout the day is naturally full of emotion but to shoot the best images, it’s important to be able to recognise when priceless moments are about to occur and position yourself in the right place at the right time, especially with more couple choosing reportage style wedding photography.

Everyday life moments

From people interacting with each other, animals or nature to the drama of a thunderstorm or the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, life produces everyday moments all of the time; they’re just waiting to be captured.

Don’t wait for a preconceived idea of the perfect moment to take a shot. Your next best image could take you by surprise, especially with street and travel photography. Rather than seeing the world only through your viewfinder, observe the scene as a whole and consider the shot you really want to capture, then get ready to click that shutter and get your image.

It’s always tempting to just fire away in every situation, but that often leads to the disappointment of getting home, uploading your images and being faced with the realisation that you not only missed the shot, but you also missed the moment.

Try to train your mind to live in the moment and ignore any distractions in order to really see what is happening in any given situation.

Moments in Motion

If you’re trying to capture an amazing moving moment, the decisive moment is absolutely key. To capture the movement perfectly, you’ll need to see what’s happening and anticipate what is coming next. Even when you’re using your camera’s technical functions, such as focus tracking, it’s important to know what might happen next in a series of events.

If you’re wanting to freeze a moment and capture a perfectly clear shot of a split-second action, you’ll need a fast shutter speed, or if you’re aiming to create a feeling of slowing down the movement by incorporating blur, a slow shutter speed will be needed. No matter what you’re trying to capture in an image or the tools you use, the most important thing is to know the goal of your end result and how you plan to achieve it.

The decisive moment in landscape photography

While weddings and events allow you a wealth of opportunities to capture decisive moments and motion photography presents the chance to tell the story of a moment in time, there are also ways to find decisive moments in landscape photography.

To capture decisive moments in landscapes, you’ll need to start by finding the right composition and consider the time of day, lighting, weather and cloud patterns for example. Here the landscape is your subject, so you’ll need to find when and how it looks at its best.

To find the meaning and as such, the decisive moment such as sunrise, you’ll need to really observe the space.

Conclusion

Photography, like any other form of art, is subjective and the decisive moment is too. One viewer might see it as missing the moment, while it may be viewed as the perfect creative shot by another.

Like everything with photography, practice makes perfect and while a “spray and pray” approach isn’t always the best method, taking burst shots of a particular scene or event and reviewing each shot can be a great way to start noticing when you just hit the nail on the head and got the shot, making it easier to identify and replicate this in the future.

For the best new and used cameras to capture your decisive moment, visit one of our stores in London, Essex or Stevenage or take a look online. You'll find a huge range of photography equipment at great prices as well as expert advice. All our advisors are passionate about photography and always happy to pass on their wealth of knowledge.