It was the famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who coined the expression ‘the decisive moment’, in his seminal book, ‘Images à la Sauvette’, published in 1952. In photographic terms, the decisive moment is that split second when you press the shutter at exactly the right time to elevate an image out of the ordinary. Of course there is a huge degree of skill involved in that, but also an element of luck.

This week’s challenge is to show photographs that were taken in that brief but decisive moment and, unusually for me, I’m posting two images this time.

My first thought on reading the challenge was ‘fireworks’. It’s surely at least 99% luck if you get a truly memorable image from a firework display, and the chances are that you will instead end up with – almost literally – a damp squib. Somehow, though, I managed to nail this one (and quite a few more, as it happened) on New Year’s Eve in Sydney, close to twenty years ago:

Much more recently – only last weekend, in fact – we went to admire some Highland cattle at a nearby village fête. There were two adjacent pens, one containing two bulls and the other holding some cows with their calves. Having snapped (well, ‘pressed’ really nowadays, isn’t it?) away merrily for a while, I was getting ready to leave when the older bull and one of the cows went in for what can only be described as a smooch through the bars that separated them. I guess I was lucky to be there when it happened.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Lucky Shot