I came across a wonderful little piece in the Guardian the other about a photographer whom I’d never heard of before, but on looking at his work I was completely enthralled. The photographer is Raúl Cañibano from Cuba. His work falls into the categories of humanism and surrealism and follows in the traditions of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt, Walker Evans, Josef Koudelka and Sebastião Salgado. It is wonderful stuff and I would urge you to have a look at his work and maybe buy his books.

This genre of photography is one that for a number years I really wanted to practice without much success. There is this assumption that it is very easy – all you have to do is walk around and point your camera at everything you see and you’ll end up with “art”. It takes a great deal of dedication, patience and an eye that can spot “a significant moment in the continuous flux of life and captures it in a fraction of a second”. (p 104 Badger, G. 2007 “The Genius of Photography – how photography has changed our lives” Quadrille Publishing Ltd, London). Or to put it another way that nanosecond when all the individual elements of a photograph come together to create meaning. For years I have wanted to take a certain photograph that for me epitomises this ethos. I can see the image in my minds eye, but, I can never manage to make it happen. It is a simple concept but it has eluded me.

The idea is that a person walks into a large flock of pigeons that are feeding on the ground and as they do the birds take flight and we have a photo of a person surrounded by a swirling mass of birds.  As I said it is a very simple concept and not original in any shape or form. The occurrence happens frequently yet I just can’t nail it. The best attempt so far is one that I took in Nepal in 1987 (yes it’s been going on that long!). It’s an OK shot on one level, but it is really too cluttered to work. Fast forward to Monday and I was in Perth walking through Forest Place where there was a flock of pigeons feeding on the ground. Suddenly alert to the possibilities I caught out of the corner of my eye a small boy running around in that state of hyper excitement that only small boys can have. I immediately thought that at last it is finally going to happen. So as the little lad approached the birds I quickly framed up and set an appropriate aperture and shutter speed and waited for the decisive moment of the child scattering the flock and them taking flight around him. I could just see the finished photograph. So what happened? Well the little lad did indeed run among the pigeons and they just didn’t react. The whole episode was a tremendous anticlimax. Maybe one day it will happen.