Every serious photographer has a point in their life where it all lights up(pun intended). It is when everything about photography – the light, the emotion, the purpose of it all will become a revelation. All the photographer has to do is keep learning and hope that revelation happens sooner than later. Something like that happened tonight.
As the night of Halloween unfolded, I wandered the neighborhood streets with Fuji X100V. There was no plan, just the camera and me, looking for a glimpse of something special. Little did I know, the night would gift me with a scene straight out of a Cartier-Bresson frame.
Then it happened. Not a solitary passerby, but a burst of life as a group of children, small and sprightly, dashed across the street. Their costumes fluttered like wings, their shadows stretching behind them, turning them into fleeting spirits of the night. It was spontaneous and spectacular. I lifted my camera, my finger found the shutter, and the moment was immortalized. As they say, you know right away when you have a keeper shot.
The image I was lucky to capture this evening speaks in whispers of Bresson’s philosophy: the undeniable poetry of an instant, where the visual and emotional components align seamlessly. It wasn’t merely the children running; it was their joy, the freedom of Halloween night, the magic of childhood — all suspended in air within a fraction of a second under the street light’s halo. Plus, it wasn’t a perfect shot and that was the magic.
This image, much like Bresson’s masterpiece, was not created but rather allowed to happen. It was the universe conspiring with a photographer’s patience, framing the boundless energy of a Halloween evening in a single, telling frame. It’s moments like these that remind me why the camera is my constant companion, why the hunt is always worth the patience, and why photography is an unending love affair with the ‘now.’
And so, with that click, a new decisive moment was born, not on the streets of Paris, but on Pacific Northwest’s quiet neighborhood street bathed in the amber glow of Halloween. It’s a reminder: the decisive moment is not a past memory of photography’s golden age; it is always there, waiting to be seen, to be felt, and to be captured by those who dare to look, to wait, and to click.
lazylens.com 