Instinct
“Loosening up” is often encouraged by David Alan Harvey and other great photographers. Taking the picture without thinking too much. Being not only the bow, but also the arrow and the target itself.
Being instinctual.
There is a delay between seeing something and pressing the shutter button. The signal from your eyes to your brain to your hand takes time to be transmitted and processed. I remember someone saying that Cartier-Bresson could see the future a split second before, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to catch the moments he did with such precision. I think this is true, but plain hard work and taking lots and lots of pictures (including, and mostly, bad ones!) was part of it as well I am sure, as was hard work in editing and good luck!
Capturing a fleeting moment of human expression in a photograph is living now, is being in the present time and acting with the present time. Acting instinctually is living now, and this includes hard work at doing what you want to do instead of always postponing for later, instead of making excuses.
Rather than thinking too much, is it not better to just do it?
Oh, and before I forget, I have a new favorite photographer: John Vink.
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