Many people including myself who venture into street photography, try to learn about its history by studying the work of the masters and the literature surrounding them. The one concept which stands out amongst the text is the “decisive moment”. Today we will talk a bit more about the history of this technique, its application in the street and conclude with a photo essay which in which I will take you through the capturing this exact moment in time.

Henry  Cartier-Bresson,  yea yea,  we have heard of him: the Frenchman with the  Leica, The BW master, the  father of  documentary photography. He started it all way back in 1952 when he published the “Images à la Sauvette”, which roughly translates as “images on the run”. This book was later retitled to the “The Decisive Moment”, by their English publisher Simon and Schuster. In his preface , he cites the 17th century Cardinal de Retz who said, “Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif” – “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.”

There is a lot of material on the decisive moment (DM), one definition I found states: this moment occurs when the visual and psychological elements of people in a real life scene spontaneously and briefly come together in perfect resonance to express the essence of that situation.

Let us take this definition of DM and see how it works in the field. I have taken a set of pictures from one of my trips to Darjeeling, a hill station in India, famous for its heritage toy train and its priced tea.

I am walking down an alley from the main road and spot this scene. A dog sitting in anticipation, and a lady peeping into a shop window. Two subjects in the foreground with shop as the backdrop.

A few steps, the butcher who plays the third subject comes into view.

At first it looks like an ordinary scene, a dog waiting in anticipation outside a butcher shop for some tit bits to be thrown to him. What bewildered me is the proximity of the dog with the lady, there must be some connection as the dog could have stood by itself at the shop depending on the butchers sympathy.  Was the dog her pet, it looked like a stray.

There was no action, so I continued my walk  down the road till I heard some barking. I turned around to see the dog demanding a portion. This was a bit unusual, so I walked back a few steps and got a position on the other side of the road far enough not to distract any of the subjects.

The lady gives the dog a piece of her mind. I cant make out what she said in her native tongue, but the dog surely looked a bit disappointed.

I can hear the hammering of the butchers knife hitting wood, so the lady is waiting for her order of fresh meat.

I wait on,  street photography is built on the mundane and ordinary moments, so any moment has the potential for a great photograph.

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This is followed by another sound, of someone rummaging through a heap of plastic looking for a plastic cover prompting a reaction from the dog. He stretches out his feet towards the lady, was this the decisive moment ?

Not yet, but the next picture is. A stray dog gesturing to a customer at a butcher shop for some nibbles of fresh meat.

At times, there can be a series of moments, some similar and some  providing some variety to the setting. If you are patient enough to watch the story unfold you will surely see them. In this case, I wanted to see the ending of this story. The lady was waiting for the meat, the dog for his share, and me for another shot.

And then it happens, and it is even better. I get all the three characters in the plot in the frame.

The suspense continues, the butcher packs the meat, the lady reaches over to get her parcel.

The lady gets her parcel, and just walks away. Every dog has his day, but not today.   From this series of pictures you can see how photography, compared to other visual arts, has this ability to capture  fleeting moments, providing an instant in the flow of life.

Hope you enjoyed my simplification of the decisive moment through this story. Now you need to step out and grab yours !