The moving image

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

And every time, I ask myself afterwards why I actually said it. Because when the perfect moment arrives, it's usually over before I even realize it. Time runs faster than words can keep up. And the moment begins to dissolve with the sentence at the latest. What remains is a faint echo and the hope that perhaps an image has remained after all.

I tried for a long time to predict these 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 deliberate. But the more I tried to plan and create authenticity, the more artificial it became. Because authenticity cannot be staged. And a moment that is supposed to look as if it was accidental is often only a hand's breadth away from the stiffness of a passport photo.

I know a lot of photographers who keep their finger on the shutter button - constant fire. Taking hundreds of pictures in minutes. Later they sift, sort and select. Then, out of a thousand shots, there is just one picture that "hits the mark". That's legitimate. But for me it feels like deep-sea fishing with huge, kilometer-long nets: You catch everything - and hope there's something good in it.

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

I want the person in front of my camera to recognize themselves. Not in the 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 fished this for you. Just for you. Because that's how you were at 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,
maybe 1/60th in the end.

The result is not always razor sharp.
But it is clear.
Not technically, but emotionally.
Blurred perhaps - but not out of focus.
Not in focus, but in the picture.

Because that's exactly what interests me:
You move -
forwards, backwards,
you turn, dance,
or stand still.

And I'm not just holding you,
but also the before and 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 can continue to linger.