[B&W photography] Capturing the Moment: A case-study of a creative process

Whenever possible, I like capturing unusual situations or interactions between people. That doesn't necessarily mean shooting from the hip as soon as your peripheral vision registers any movement. Often, I first chose a relatively static scene, and then just let the situation come to me. Sometimes nothing happens, so I end up with the picture as originally framed. Surprisingly often however, tiny events start to unfold right in front of your eyes.

In this case, the basic set-up was a de-commissioned railway carriage in Luxembourg, with an appropriately romantic sign reading: Rendez-vous, with two ladies chatting and smoking towards the left part of the frame. I had time aplenty, since I was waiting for a train. My FujiX100T was set at a slow exposure time of 1/30, because neither the carriage nor the ladies were moving much, so I opted for a higher F stop to get everything in equal focus.

A father and his small son strode by on the way to their train, and just as they were passing me, the son lost his scarf. If you look carefully, you can see the the very moment before it hit the ground. Yet as neither me nor my camera were ready, the result is a barely distinguishable blur.

Undeterred, I called out on the father to alert him that he's lost something, and quickly changed the time setting to 1/250. By the time he ran back to pick the scarf up, I was ready ;-)

The framing isn't perfect, since I didn't manage to avoid an overlap between the father and one of the ladies in the background, but I was still happy for using my "second chance".