In Zen Buddhism is Japan, archery is practised as a way of bringing maximum consciousness and alertness to one single point.
The archer must pay attention to his breathing, his stance, his eye on the target, the bow and arrow in his hands, and his intention.
At the decisive moment and leading up to it, he must clean his mind of conflicting thoughts so that he only thinks as a totality, becoming just one ‘idea’ releasing an arrow to its destination.
Once the arrow is loosed from the bow, all the archer can do is watch.
The act of taking a photograph is the meeting of many things. There are the technical aspects of aperture and shutter speed, decisions such as how to frame the subject and how near to be to the subject, breathing, holding the camera, etc.
And they all come together in one moment. If it is the right moment – ‘the decisive moment’ – as Henri Cartier-Bresson described it, then it has captured something that was unique and worth recording.
Cartier-Bression said:
For me, photography is the exploration in reality of the rhythm of surfaces, lines, or values; the eye carves out its subject, and the camera has only to do its work.
Robert Doisneau, on the other hand, wouldn’t talk about what photography meant to him, and is quoted as saying:
If you take photographs, don’t speak, don’t write, don’t analyse yourself, and don’t answer any questions.
Even in the studio – where the photographer and the model can repeat the scene endless times – the little movements, looks, and expressions are fleeting.
Which is perhaps why Robert Doisneau said:
If I knew how to take a good photograph, I’d do it every time.
