Author: nadeeneb

This photo is a prime example of a decisive moment; it was taken in a split second moment where my cat Sushi was standing in front of the sunlight emitting from the window of the front door. Sushi is a very active cat and doesn’t like standing still, so a few seconds before, he wasn’t near the area, and a few seconds after, he ran away. The rule of thirds can be used here to emphasize not just Sushi, but the sunlight. What is the dominant expression? Sushi? The light? It can be both. The contrast between his fur and the light makes both aspects stand out in the neutral colored living room. It just seems like the perfect photo that I am so lucky to have been able to take because it looks like he is posing for the photo. The background is also blurred, giving it a focus and shallow depth of field.

This photo was also a decisive moment because of course, it’s Sushi, and he doesn’t like staying still. This photo was taken when we set up the automatic litter box for the first time, and Sushi went in to explore it. The way that the photo is taken to not show any of the background makes it look like he is in some kind of spaceship or alien aircraft. The green lighting inside the litter box really emphasizes that. The dominant expression could be the litter box itself with the way it is lighting up green, or it could be Sushi with the way he is being lit up by the litter box itself.

This third photo is of my other cat, Socks, staring at me through the wooden stair beams, although just by looking at it, one can’t really tell it is stair beams. This could also be considered a decisive moment because he could have moved any time I took the photo, making it vastly different. However, he is a lazy cat so he’d probably be there a while. The way this photo is cropped makes it look like he’s either stuck in a box or prison bars, like he can’t get out. Socks loves eye contact for some reason, so him looking straight at the camera makes it feel like he is trying to tell the viewer something, like “Let me out!”.

In Teju Cole’s essay “Perfect and Unrehearsed,”  the photo that I liked the most was “Three boys in Liberia.” This is because of many things, starting off with the fact that it is an art photo. It is obvious to tell that this photo is a decisive moment, meaning the photographer took the photo decisively. That is one reason that I like it; it isn’t rehearsed or practiced to get a photo like that. It also gives a story of three boys playing in the sea. It leaves the viewer with questions such as “Who exactly are these boys?” or “Why is it in black and white?”. To continue, another reason why this photo stood out to me was because it was in black and white. This means that there is no color, and all there is is black, white, and gray. I believe this further enhances the lighting and the darkness of the entire photo, even if the viewer cannot tell what time of day it is. It further deepens the contrast of certain aspects of the photo, such as the boys to the sea. To add on, the dominant impression is definitely the three boys running into the water because they are the main focus of the photo and their contrast to the background. They definitely are the main focus because they bring so much life into this still photo.