Testing the Prime

Gripman on Brake, originally uploaded by lacadaz.

I took my camera with me when I headed down to the Embarcadero to get a haircut. I spent part of the morning trying to decipher what the moderators were looking for in a flickr group dedicated to my favorite photographer Henri Cartier Brenson. The name of the group is Decisive Moments after HBC's collection of photographs covering 1930 to 1957. There was much debate about what exactly a decisive moment was. Some people took it as the moment when something signficant happens in the subjects life. Other's saw it more as a play of time and alignment between photographer, subject and environment. HBC wrote about the term like this, "...the decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression."

After having 3 of the 4 pictures I submitted rejected I thought I would try to think more like Henri and only took out my 50mm "Prime" lens. No hiding behind a long lens today. No being lazy and using the zoom instead of my feet to frame the picture. It was tough but I did manage this capture which I like very much. I was sitting on the California line waiting for this guy and the conductor to finish their breaks for the ride home. I like this shot but I'm not going to send it to the Decisive Moment group. The one thing I think I have learned is that those guys are elitist jerks.