Time and again Henri Cartier-Bresson found himself in the right place and, with perfect timing, captured the moment on his Leica. Now he has a new breed of competition: millions and billions (er, millions anyway) of regular people wielding digital cameras offering 24/7 worldwide instantaneous coverage.
Today a passenger plane went down in the Hudson River. Moments later Twitter user “jkrums” uploaded this photo from his iPhone. Hours later his photo is becoming an icon of the event, and he is the toast of the talk shows and the Internet. So much for all the pro photographers who immediately rushed to the river with their fancy cameras and “L” lenses. By the time they’d uploaded their photos with the wireless laptops they’d lugged along on their backs, and by the time the wire services had sorted them out and put the best efforts forward, this image was already becoming an icon of the day.
Related posts: