I was out early a couple of days ago with some photography friends taking photographs of the sunrise over the skyline of Kansas City Missouri and the Missouri and Kansas rivers. Storms were brewing to the north and there was a possibility in the area we were photographing. As I was taking photographs, I saw this scene. The man watching wasn’t with our group, he wasn’t a photographer or fisherman but was out at 7:20 AM just watching the show nature was putting on. As far as I could determine he was alone. As I watched him watching the show of nature I wondered what his thoughts were, what his story is, and what brought him out so early on a Saturday morning.
I didn’t talk to him, I just quietly took my photographs, intentionally making it difficult to recognize him so as to maintain a level of privacy in his moment. As Henri Cartier-Bresson noted this felt like a decisive moment. A totally unposed unplanned moment that just came together between man and nature.
As we are out doing our art photography thing, it is often easy to get caught up in the act of taking photographs that we don’t pay attention to our surroundings, and even though I have never been much of a street photographer I was able to notice this scene and believe it may have been a turning point for both the man and myself. I can only imagine what was going through the man’s mind and his decision but for me, the moment reinforced the reminder to pay attention to what is going on around you, and sometimes you just watch the moment.
Photographer Clay 