The Decisive Moment

Shot @ ISO 1250, 1/1600sec, f/3.5

     "Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever." - Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1957.

 H. Cartier-Bresson coined the term "The Decisive Moment." This phrase contains the quintessential difference between the masters of photography, and the mere hobbyists.

     If a sports photographer is shooting an LA Lakers basketball game, and he clicks the shutter a second or two after Kobe dunks, the photograph might as well be deleted. That is how important seizing that golden moment can be. 

   
     One way that I have been able to sharpen my skill of capturing that instantaneous moment is taking photos in the passenger seat of the car. This simple visual and mental exercise trains my mind to see a few seconds into the future, thus allowing me to imagine the image in my head before I see it on the LCD screen of my camera. More often than not, I smack on my 18mm lens, and either roll down the window, or I open the sun roof, depending on the environment. Sometimes, if the window is dirty enough, and I am trying to capture a grungy or morbidly urban image, I keep the window rolled up, to add to the grotesqueness.

Late-Night Entertainment

Shot on a Konica Minolta Dimage A2. Exposed for 1/20 sec (handheld) at f/3.5 and ISO 64 (Unedited).

Limitless

There is something about the stars (and space in general) that fascinate me. Sometimes I will go outside late at night (midnight even) and just stare at the stars while my camera's shutter is also absorbing the beauty. Try it sometime.

Trees

This past weekend I finished creating a hardcover photo-book titled Trees. This 20-page coffee-table book contains some very evocative & emotion-filled images that I've created in the last couple years. After all, emotions are what we feed off of, in a sense; emotions are at the heart of what it means to be a person. It's what distinguishes us from machines of all sorts.

I am very excited to get my photo book in the mail any day now! This will be my second photo book. Here's a couple images that are in the book...

P.S. - here's the website that I used to make my photo book: http://www.photobin.com/ (Not nearly as good as blurb.com , in my opinion at least. But hey, maybe some of you out there will try it out and enjoy the site more than I did!). Also, if you'd like to grab a copy, just shoot me an email @ daviddobreski@yahoo.com.

Sunday Afternoon

As I was walking around the Four Seasons Hotel, I was trying to capture the essence of it, namely, its grandiosity. Although this is just about half of the hotel, I think it does justice to the tremendous hotel.

Muses of Nature

Why is it that so often when we look at elements in nature our imaginations wander and we begin to see things that are not really there? For instance, people gaze up at the blue sky accompanied by white fluffy clouds and imagine them to be a small dog or the face of a loved one, or some other figment of their imagination.

Within the frame above, my mind chisels out dozens of figures (faces, animals, designs, etc.) from the rocks. As an artist, I draw a significant amount of inspiration from nature.

Inspiration Point

Hiking is an interesting sport. Sometimes you feel like passing out and just giving up, and other times you feel like king of the world. Personally, I find inspiration and motivation whenever I come across sweeping vistas, grandiose panoramas, and other  tremendous sights. Going on hikes really puts everything back into perspective for me, and I realize how puny I am compared to the grand scheme of it all.