Getting beyond "the shot"

You will sometimes hear photographers talk about getting “the shot” — they captured what they wanted to get. If you were to compare photography to the way we commonly think about education, this picture is the equivalent of the diploma. It’s the reward. The achievement is complete. We’re done here.

This concept has some precedence in art history. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer of candid scenes and he was known for capturing “the decisive moment.” The elements in his photographs were so perfectly arranged that a picture taken even a split second earlier or later would appear obviously inferior.

I’ve had a few of my own decisive moment images, but I generally reject the notion that there’s a perfect way to depict anything. That mindset blocks discovery and it runs counter to how I view nature. If there is a singular shot, our world would have to be static. But it isn’t. Nature is alive. Things are how they are now because of trillions of changes over millions of years. And if not for a photo, this moment likely wouldn’t even qualify as a blip a millennia from now. It might not even with the photo.

I’ve written before how spending even a few minutes in nature can reveal wondrous subtleties a quick glance will never reveal. It’s the core idea behind my Five Minutes in Nature project. But I was recently reminded that sometimes you don’t even need five minutes. The two images in this post were captured 90 seconds apart.

While they’re zoomed differently and I swapped the camera orientation, both pictures were taken from the same vantage point overlooking a small creek running through the Flint Hills of Kansas. In the spring, the main draw is the bright green grasses that cover many of the hills. While I enjoyed photographing them, I also found serenity in the spaces between. This creek wound its way through one such gap and my eye followed it back through a forest of cottonwoods.

Thick cumulus clouds had brought life to many of my photos throughout the day, filling an otherwise deep blue sky with what resembled balls of cotton and breaking up the solid green with their shadows. Those same clouds were changing this scene second by second.

When the sun was unobscured, the leaves were bright and the scene felt like a celebration of spring. When clouds blocked the sun, the branches and trunks of the cottonwoods were easily visible, and my attention was drawn to how they connect the sides of the creek.

So which of these two images is the shot? Neither. I don’t think there is a singular shot of this creek, just as I don’t think this creek singularly represents the Flint Hills. And so I continue to explore.

Kevin’s book, Five Minutes in Nature, collects images and stories about his experiences in the wilderness, curated to help you have deeper encounters of your own. Preview and order it here. Prints of his images are available through LivingWilderness.com. Learn about new work by joining his mailing list.)