fotoVisions : Decisive Burst

Jogging to the Altar

Every day the Boston Globe, whether print, web, or mobile app version, selects images capturing moments which draw us in. But once a year the Sunday magazine publishes the photo editor’s best of the best picks.The assembled photographs are a stunning collection of Decisive Moments, a term coined for truly outstanding images by legendary photojournalist/street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB). When HCB sensed his head, eye, and heart were aligned on the same axis, he pressed the shutter of his Leica camera to frame images for the ages. How can today’s pros, or anyone for that matter, perform similar magic? During a recent evening program with a few Globe photographers speaking about their best of the best, I learned one technique - Decisive Burst.

So what’s a Decisive Burst?

It’s a sequence of exposures - three, five, seven, or more - produced at the click of the shutter button. Somewhere in the series, there’s likely to be a decisive split second yielding the perfect photo. During the film era a camera equipped with a motor drive attachment could automatically advance film rapidly for each exposure. Today a simple digital ‘burst’ menu setting achieves the same result.

'I Am Not Throwing Away My Shot'. For a pro on assignment, those lyrics from the Broadway sensation Hamilton must ring true. Typically he/she has one shot, one opportunity to deliver the sought after newsworthy goods to the editor before deadline. Among this year’s best of the best, the photographers had several challenges to endure in plying their craft so impressively - braving a nor’easter’s pelting rain, wading into flood waters in hip boots, arising in frigid pre-dawn hours searching for the right light, or renting a single-engine plane to circle above shark infested waters. They may have had only one shot, and they didn’t want to throw that opportunity away. In situations like those, the Decisive Burst technique may have come in handy to achieve praiseworthy results. It’s also a reason to marvel at so many of those memorable B&W film images from back in the 20th century captured brilliantly without a mechanized burst. Those classic images framed our vision of the era.

Consider Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous "Kissing Sailor" photograph on V-J Day in Times Square (August 14, 1945). The world war was over and tons of confetti were raining down on thousands of ecstatic New Yorkers.

The Kiss 1945
credit - Alfred Eisenstaedt

In Eisenstaedt’s account, he was meandering through the celebrating crowds hunting for pictures when he noted a sailor alternately strutting and staggering down Broadway grabbing any female he could and kissing them. Eisie (as Eisenstaedt was affectionately known) then noticed a nurse in whites within the scrum but also in the sailor’s path. Anticipating an opportunity he kept running ahead with a hunch the kissing sailor would grab the nurse wearing her standout whites. As suspected, he did. With the seaman’s hand sweeping into the small of her back, she braced, arched backward with a bent knee and a pointed toe for balance just as the sailor’s kiss was planted. Click! Eisenstaedt later reflected that contrast between the dark uniform and white dress coupled with his camera vantage point and composition gave this Decisive Moment photo its extra impact. Other cameramen worked the crowd that day and recorded many images of the kissing sailor’s antics, but none captured the jubilation and spirit of the day as brilliantly as Eisie.

Around the beginning of the new millennium I crossed the digital divide leaving the film era planted solidly in my rear view mirror. Although I could then click liberally limited only by the camera battery’s juice, I continued to approach image capture as if the camera was loaded with a roll of film and fixed number of exposures. This mindset continues today always prompting me to rely on techniques found in master photographers’ tool kits - attention to composition, anticipation of action, seeking the optimal camera angle, and ‘getting the exposure right’ in the camera. I do not rely on photo editing to salvage images in the digital darkroom. In other words, work to align head, eye, and heart before pressing the shutter button. When that triad is assembled, it’s a ‘burst’ of pride.

Here’s a sample of my best of the best. There’s more in my web Gallery, Decisive Moments.