thomas packenham

I mentioned ‘the decisive moment’ in yesterday’s post. The Decisive Moment (1952) was where Henri Cartier-Bresson formalised his idea of capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous such that the image represents the essence of the event itself.

The mere memory of the concept had me thinking of capturing a decisive moment of my own. I wondered if a walk along Dun Laoghaire pier might be the place to search out some moment among the boats, birds and the folk taking their constitutionals. I thought to take 4000 steps to find documentary shots with a personal expression of the things I saw.

And Thursday smiled on me. I found myself on the pier chatting to another photographer who chose coincidentally to also bring a Sigma 150-600mm lens, just like I did. I noticed a few simple juxtapositions that almost qualify as decisive, two relying on the distance flattening of extreme magnification. The gannet enters the water. A rod flexes in the cast of a fishing line a kilometre from my camera (the red Poolbeg Lighthouse is more than five kilometres distant). Perspective misleads as two identical ships pass near the mouth of Dublin port.