While we see human and natural events as a continuum of time and
space, the camera can preserve only an instant in those events. In that
moment everything exists in a unique physical relationship to
everything else, and moving things – people, animals, machines – are
recorded at one precise stage of their continuous motion.

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But what I think is an essential limitation of still photography is also one of its greatest challenges: to make that instant, convey the dynamic of
motion and emotion inherent to in the experience. A photograph of a
high jumper or a child’s eager wave taken a split second too early or
too late will fail to express the essence of that tremendous effort.

 

The disappointment of much missed shots is all too familiar to me.
In photographing a world constantly in flux, you must also think about
the relationships between its parts, moving and static. You need to
recognise the instant the subject in motion is the most expressive,
you should also be able to see when is relates to its surroundings in
the most meaningful way.

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The photographer who most consistently manages to do both is Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of my favourite photographers. He has described his approach as one who seeks to identify the “decisive moment” in any scene of human life: that fraction of a second in which all elements work
together harmoniously to express the event in the best way. In doing so he has evoked an almost physical sensation in the viewer, an urge to see the action completed. But on another level, the shapes and tones exist in
perfect and eternal balance.