Fragments of Light No. 6: The Moving Image

There's this one phrase I've said countless times while taking photos –
"Please don't move now"
or
"Stay exactly like that."

And every time afterward, I ask myself why I even said it. Because when the perfect moment arrives, it's usually gone before I even realize it. Time flies faster than words can keep up. And the moment begins to dissolve the moment itself, at the latest with the words spoken. What remains is a faint echo and the hope that perhaps some image has survived.

For a long time, I tried to anticipate those fleeting seconds, to deliberately bring them about, to create situations in which something "real" emerges—a facial expression that seems natural, a smile that doesn't seem forced. But the more I tried to plan and engineer authenticity, the more artificial it became. Because authenticity can't be staged. And a moment meant to appear accidental is often only a hair's breadth away from the stiffness of a passport photo.

I know many photographers who keep their finger on the shutter button – continuous shooting. Taking hundreds of pictures in minutes. Later, they review, sort, and select. Out of a thousand shots, there's only one that "hits the mark." That's legitimate. But to me, it feels like deep-sea fishing with huge, kilometer-long nets: you catch everything – and hope that something good is among them.

I, on the other hand, prefer to go fishing.

I want the person in front of my camera to recognize themselves. Not in a technical sense, not in sharpness and symmetry, but in the feeling they see when they look at the picture. I want to be able to say:
"Look, I captured this for you. Just for you. Because that's how you were in that moment."

Not:
"That was just there. I picked it out."

I want more than that. I don't just want a moment. I want the in-between.

Where there is movement. Where something happens. Where the face changes, the shoulders relax, the eyes wander.

So I increase my shutter speed.
From 1/250th to 1/125th,
and finally maybe to 1/60th.

What emerges isn't always perfectly sharp.
But it's clear.
Not technically, but emotionally.
Perhaps a little shaky – but not blurry.
Not in focus, but in the frame.

Because that's exactly what interests me:
You move –
forward, backward,
you turn, dance,
or stand still.

And I'm not just holding on to you,
but also to what came before and what came after.
The direction, the mood, the hesitation, the blossoming.

While you are no longer in the moment, but still in the picture.

The moving image is not an attempt to stop time – but to give it a framework in which it may continue to linger.