Candid-ate

Candid portraits are some of my favorite pictures in the world. I'm new to portraiture altogether, but once my fascination with landscapes and nature waned I found myself wholly in love with street photography as well as candid or spontaneous portraits.

Not surprisingly my interest turned to Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose uncompromising view of photography is hard to resist. His photographs are engaging, surprising, and so down to earth they are almost shocking.

However, it is believed that his style was not as spontaneous as people first thought. Some of his pictures were planned, posed, or otherwise controlled before being captured forever on 35mm film.

I'm not offended by this. He was a stickler, the very definition of the word, for getting the composition right before going into the darkroom. He never cropped, always printed full-frame and never dodged, burned, or employed other darkroom trickery.

His work speaks for itself. I am not bothered to learn that he would ask a subject, even a stranger, to perform an action so that he might catch it just so. We do this every day as photographers. We are liars and cheats in so many minuscule ways.

The true test is what we choose to turn our lens toward. How we choose to interpret the scene.

If we can capture that perfect moment, the portrait's perfect essence, its soul, then the means to that end are trivial.