Blink. The power of thinking without thinking. In this book, Malcolm Gladwell discusses how sometimes too much information and analysis can get in the way of our judgement. Snap decisions are made subconsciously, or even unconsciously. And sometimes this beats all the scientific analysis in a way that even the person cannot honestly explain.

The book begins with the discovery of whether a statue was legitimate or not. A lot of data was taken and analyzed over many months and the scientists were convinced that the statue was an original. On the other hand, a few experts, seeing the statue for only a few seconds felt uneasy and were convinced that it was a very good imitation. They were right They didn’t know how they came to the decision, just that it didn’t look and feel right. Their spontaneous reaction in this case was better than the carefully considered one.

And so the book dwelled deeper into many more examples. I like one of the analogies someone mentioned that you can see all the pieces on a chessboard, but does that guarantee you a win? So you can have all the information you can collect but does that make your decision any better?

In photography, Cartier-Bresson coined the phrase decisive moment. The moment when everything falls into place and you just know when to hit the shutter. Sometimes you plan the shoot, sometimes you just react to the situation without giving much thought to information like shutter speed, ISO, aperture and the likes. The book concludes that experts generally make better judgements in a blink than after careful consideration. Same with photography. Experts need to have that intuition. And being an expert comes through practice and familiarity with your equipment. If you like street photography or even shooting a fast moving event unfolding, practice puts you waiting at the perfect spot. And hitting the shutter is just a matter of a blink after that.

I like the example of shooting a wedding. Because it’s a shoot like this where the photographer is on his toes anticipating action and firing without even thinking. It’s second nature. See every element falling into place, and shoot. Its reacting to the situation. If I had to consider everything, I’ll probably have to direct and orchestrate the action. A definite no-no in my photography.