How Many Moments in a Second?
I saw the moment. I positioned myself so my iPhone rested horizontally in my hand. Since I held it at waist level I didn't realize the picture would be slightly off kilter, or that a little piece of my hand would be visible in the frame. Those things, of course, could be fixed post production. Anathema to some to consider that I should be getting the correct shot in camera; others appreciating that photography is play, is manipulation, is the entire reason I chose the Live setting on my iPhone. I knew one shutter click would capture 20 or more pictures.
I waited for the big dog to enter the left of the frame. I snapped several times, knowing that each shutter release would capture the dog as he moved through the frame, that those snaps (5 or 6 in the moment) would multiple by the Live function on the iPhone to over a hundred images.
I had successfully magnified time. A couple seconds stretched to a moment of infinity.
For many years I used the Live function on my iPhone unwittingly. Not exactly knowing its purpose. Then I realized I could utilize this to capture that very tiny sliver of time that matched what I saw to what I hoped to capture. I didn't know I now had a library of fractured time filling up physical and virtual hard drives.
A couple seconds after the dog passed by, his owner followed along, a slightly disapproving smirk on her face when she figured out what I had been doing. I had taken a couple seconds of her pet's life; she was the one that fed and groomed him, so why was I entitled to immortalize him? This is a question environmental street photographers like myself or like the greats, Cartier-Bresson, Webb, Winogrand, Maier, etc., try to justify in the pursuit of their art. Why are we given the God-hands to pluck out of a moment a second, and why does the industry of camera capture do our bidding and make those seconds multiple to infinitesimal eons?
And even the bigger question. Do we really need all those picoseconds? (one-trillionth of a second) (If I had a second for every picosecond I'd be a very a different guy: But that's another story.)
I saw an opportunity to make a picture. I decided in the moment the best way to make it happen. I used my eye and I used technology, and later on I used my artistic inclinations and more technology to further match what I saw in my mind when I first saw the opportunity. Maybe the owner's dog would appreciate my efforts, or maybe she would consider me still an interloper to her day, much like those through time and history who have been captured by other photographers. And as technology expands tiny intimate spans of time that we used to call decisive moments are actually fractured to even more exact bits.
Leonardo Da Vinci is celebrated for his minute observations of the human form. The mass of an arm is the same but looks different as it moves through air. Angles accentuate or minimize muscle structure, and light and shadow further ripple what we see, what we wanted to remember, what we manage to capture.
How many moments in a second? Well, as an artist still in pursuit of the golden spiral that we call life, I hope one day hours knock at the door of attoseconds.
Though I wonder; what will that cloud storage cost?
Reference Book
One of the pioneers of still photography was Eadweard Muybridge, whose study of animals in motion showcased the power of photography. These awe-inspiring images are not mere snapshots but true action photos, frozen in series and taken at staggering speeds of up to 1/2000th of a second. It proves that technology itself goes backwards and forwards, as the age of digital photography firmly takes over the role of film.
