Photo Quotes ArchiveQuotes about Photography > Photographer (227 quotes)
"I hope that my work will encourage self expression in others and stimulate the search for beauty and creative excitement in the great world around us."
Ansel Adams
Quote #7
"What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own."
Diane Arbus
Quote #9
"I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse."
Diane Arbus
Quote #10
"I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs."
Garry Winogrand
Quote #13
"I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions."
Garry Winogrand
Quote #17
"Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity; be intensely yourself. Don’t try to be outstanding; don’t try to be a success;don’t try to do pictures for others to look at- just please yourself."
Ralph Steiner
Quote #31
"So when I became interested in photography and further being inspired by the work that I saw of Ansel and others, it was a natural extension to go back to these places that I knew as a kid and explore them with my camera."
John Sexton
Quote #41
"I make photographs and still make photographs of the natural environment. It's a love because that was part of my life before I was involved in photography. "
John Sexton
Quote #42
"For me the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It's that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom. "
John Sexton
Quote #43
"I think landscape photography in general is somewhat undervalued. "
Galen Rowell
Quote #45
"As you get older, you have different tools, and you learn to use photography differently."
Annie Leibovitz
Quote #50
"Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true."
Jacques Henri Lartigue
Quote #51
"I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new."
Ernst Haas
Quote #56
"Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made. "
Andy Goldsworthy
Quote #59
"When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice."
Robert Frank
Quote #62
"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."
Elliott Erwitt
Quote #64
"Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks. "
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #68
"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary. "
David Bailey
Quote #71
"It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators."
Ansel Adams
Quote #73
"For spiritual companions I have had the many artists who have relied on nature to help shape their imagination. And their most elaborate equipment was a deep reverence for the world through which they passed. Photographers share something with these artists. We seek only to see and to describe with our own voices, and, though we are seldom heard as soloists, we cannot photograph the world in any other way."
Sam Abell
Quote #75
"I'm always mentally photographing everything as practice. "
Minor White
Quote #79
"If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up."
Robert Mapplethorpe
Quote #81
"If it’s a likeness, alone, it’s not a success. If, through my portraits, you can come to know the subjects more meaningfully, if it synthesizes your feelings toward someone whose work has imprinted itself on your mind–-if you see a photograph and say, ‘Yes, this is the person,’ with a little new insight–-that is a beautiful experience."
Yousuf Karsh
Quote #84
"It fascinates me that there is a variety of feeling about what I do. I'm not a premeditative photographer. I see a picture and I make it. If I had a chance, I'd be out shooting all the time. You don't have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you."
Lee Friedlander
Quote #85
"Making pictures is a very simple act. There is no great secret in photography…schools are a bunch of crap. You just need practice and application of what you’ve learned. My absolute conviction is that if you are working reasonably well the only important thing is to keep shooting…it doesn’t matter whether you are making money or not. Keep working, because as you go through the process of working things begin to happen."
Elliott Erwitt
Quote #86
"The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. There is something demoralizing about going back to a place to retake pictures. You can no longer see your subjects in a fresh eye; you keep comparing them with the pictures you hold in your memory. [The] world was full of discoveries waiting to be made…(as a photographer) I could share the things I saw and learned…you would react to something all others might walk by."
Margaret Bourke-White
Quote #88
"I’m not a collector at heart. I’m never tormented by the longing to possess things. I’m quite happy with my pictures. I’ve been cohabiting with them for years now and we know each other inside out, so I feel I’m entitled to say that pictures have a life and a character of their own. Maybe they’re like plants they won’t really flourish unless you talk to them. I haven’t gone that far - not yet anyway. Lots of them behave like good little girls and give me a nice smile whenever I walk past, but others are real bitches and never miss any opportunity to ruin my life. I handle them with kid gloves."
Robert Doisneau
Quote #90
"When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder)."
Aaron Siskind
Quote #91
"However, I must stress that my own interest is immediate and in the picture. What I am conscious of and what I feel is the picture I am making, the relation of that picture to others I have made and, more generally, its relation to others I have experienced."
Aaron Siskind
Quote #93
"First, and emphatically, I accept the flat plane of the picture surface as the primary frame of reference of the picture. The experience itself may be described as one of total absorption in the object. But the object serves only a personal need and the requirements of the picture. Thus, rocks are sculptured forms; a section of common decorated ironwork, springing rhythmic shapes; fragments of paper sticking to a wall, a conversation piece. And these forms, totems, masks, figures, shapes, images must finally take their place in the tonal field of the picture and strictly conform to their space environment. The object has entered the picture in a sense; it has been photographed directly. But it is often unrecognizable; for it has been removed from its original context, disassociated from its customary neighbors and forced into new relationships."
Aaron Siskind
Quote #95
"A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. [...] I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images...ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own."
Mary Ellen Mark
Quote #96
"I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There’s nothing much interesting to tell about me; what’s interesting is the person I’m photographing, and that’s what I try to show. […] I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world… that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What’s interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture."
Mary Ellen Mark
Quote #97
"I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term--meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching--there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster."
Ansel Adams
Quote #98
"If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid."
Diane Arbus
Quote #99
"Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow."
Imogen Cunningham
Quote #107
"My interest in photography did not begin with books or mentors, or with any burning desire to see the world through a camera. It evolved from an intense devotion to mountains and wilderness that eventually shaped all the parts of my life and brought them together."
Galen Rowell
Quote #109
"I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself."
Diane Arbus
Quote #113
"When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without."
Ansel Adams
Quote #114
"When the light is right and everything is working for me, I feel as tense as when making a difficult maneuver high on a mountain. A minute - and sometimes mere seconds - can make the difference between a superb image and a mundane one."
Galen Rowell
Quote #115
"Often when I walked alone in the mountains, I tried to make sense out of the two halves of my life. What went on in the city during the week seemed chaotic and unrelated to the events in my mountain world."
Galen Rowell
Quote #116
"It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life."
Helmut Newton
Quote #125
"Thirty-five years ago I became interested in photography because of the magic I saw in images. I underestimated, however, the power of photography to connect me to people."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #126
"If there is a single factor which separates the best photographers from the wannabes it is the quantity of images which they produce. They seem to be forever shooting. I have watched many of them as they take picture after picture even when they are not photographing. [...] Often these intimate images do not look as though they were taken by the same photographer. And that is their fascination and charm."
Bill Jay
Quote #127
"When I printed it, I saw something that stunned me. The photo itself wasn't that great, but it had an effect and a meaning that the room itself had not. It was lonelier and spookier than the room. It was not just what was in the room that made it happen, it was what was in me. And I only saw this when I saw my picture."
Sean Kernan
Quote #134
"I picture creativity as a large room with many doors into it--music, writing, film, painting. You've gotten used to going in through the photography door, but it can become so clogged with abandoned projects, unexamined ideas, ego, and other trash, that you can't push it open, can't even get near it. So what do you do? Just forget photography. Set it aside. Go over to a different door and push on it, and you'll find it swings right open. ... Do it to change your mind again. Do it seriously, give it your time. Don't worry about doing it well, just do it. Let it unfold in you. I tell you that something will come alive in you again."
Sean Kernan
Quote #136
"People assume that because they take most of their pictures on vacation, being a photographer is like a perpetual vacation. That would be like seeing an entertaining movie and assuming that making it was entertaining. Hah!"
Sean Kernan
Quote #137
"Only in black and white can I see the design and textures. I don't consider color photography art. Black and white is an interpretation. Color is a duplication."
Clyde Butcher
Quote #149
"Regardless of where I'm working I hope to be in the right place at the right moment--and to receive that gift of light from heaven."
Christian Fitze
Quote #150
"I seem to walk in the world as two people. The normal everyday-me is as preoccupied, unobservant and oblivious to visual clues as I ever was. Then there is the photographer-me, the one who has a camera in hand and a specific project in mind, and then the world suddenly jumps to life with potential pictures, as if a switch had been thrown in my brain and a different person is looking out of the same eyes."
Bill Jay
Quote #153
"The world tilted slightly on its axis for me that day, and it changed my thinking about photography, and orthodoxy and how I would look at other people's work. [...] I was now convinced there was little I could attempt with a camera that would lead me astray, so long as it came from a place of deep conviction."
Stewart Harvey
Quote #156
"I also try to respond to the light in terms of what it's really trying to show in and of itself. I try to use the light to its best advantage. Thus, the subject matter is not the only consideration."
Huntington Witherill
Quote #157
"I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #163
"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression. And this organization, this precision, will always escape you, if you do not appreciate what a picture is, if you do not understand that the composition, the logic, the equilibrium of the surfaces and values are the only ways of giving meaning to all that is continuously appearing and vanishing before our very eyes."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #164
"Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #165
"The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #168
"The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #169
"I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life."
Robert Capa
Quote #174
"The only nature I'm interested in is my own nature."
Aaron Siskind
Quote #188
"I was given a small camera as a wedding gift from a very dear friend. My first pictures were taken on my honeymoon. As soon as I became familiar with the camera, I was intrigued with the possibilities of expression it offered. It was like a discovery for me."
Aaron Siskind
Quote #189
"I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse."
Diane Arbus
Quote #190
"I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself."
Diane Arbus
Quote #192
"I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It’s very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it’s there and it’s not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love — all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there."
Sebastiao Salgado
Quote #193
"The greatest compliment that I know how to pay another photographer is to say, 'I never would have made that photograph myself. I'm sure glad you did.' You hope along the way that maybe, once in a while, you do that for someone else."
John Sexton
Quote #194
"To me, photography is 90% a retrospective experience. There's the part of pursuing the image, and exposing the film, but once you make the exposure, you're always looking backwards in time. I like that aspect of photography."
John Sexton
Quote #195
"Obviously, we can see what was in front of the camera, but if a photograph is honestly made, it's a bit of a self-portrait. I think it's impossible for a photographer who is working honestly to keep this from happening."
John Sexton
Quote #196
"I think one of the aspects of photography that remains for me is I find the process still frustrating. The counter to that is that it's still very exciting. If you didn't have the frustration, you wouldn't have the excitement. If you didn't have the disappointment, you wouldn't have the magical intoxication of this process working."
John Sexton
Quote #198
"This is life. It is everywhere, and it is here for the taking. I am alive and I know this, now, in a more profound way than when I am doing anything else. These sights are ephemeral, fleeting treasures that have been offered to me and to me alone. No other person in the history of the world, anywhere in all of time and space, has been granted this gift to be here in my place. And I am privileged, through the camera, to take this moment away with me. That is why I photograph."
Bill Jay
Quote #199
"I learned that the most meaningful work is found in those projects that are produced purposefully, in order to complete a specific artistic vision or statement."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #208
"A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere. They are often momentary, chance-sent things: a gleam of light on water, a trail of smoke from a passing train, a cat crossing a threshold, the shadows cast by a setting sun. Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates. Leaving out of question the deliberately posed or arranged photograph, it is usually some incidental detail that heightens the effect of a picture – stressing a pattern, deepening the sense of atmosphere. But the photographer must be able to recognize instantly such effects."
Bill Brandt
Quote #223
"Some of my best work is done when I'm half asleep."
Henry Wessel
Quote #228
"I don't go out looking for pictures. I go out, and if something catches my eye, that's reason enough to photograph it."
Henry Wessel
Quote #229
"I could feel myself changing physically. It was like something dropped out of the sky. Seeing her on the fire escape had given me a certain feeling, and then when I saw the photograph of her, it gave me a similar feeling. And I thought that was an incredibly powerful thing -- that a photograph could give you a feeling that was similar to a feeling you had in the physical world. Nobody could've told me that. I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life."
Henry Wessel
Quote #230
"There are many forms of photography. I consider myself simply a recorder of that which I find of interest around me. I personally have no desire to create or stage direct ideas."
David Hurn
Quote #233
"Life as it unfolds in front of the camera is full of so much complexity, wonder and surprise that I find it unnecessary to create new realities. There is more pleasure, for me, in things as-they-are."
David Hurn
Quote #234
"My photography is a reflection, which comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity - the suspended moment - intervenes during action, in the viewfinder"
Abbas
Quote #235
"Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that it is just a trick."
Christopher Anderson
Quote #236
"If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument."
Eve Arnold
Quote #237
"You can’t make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn’t there."
Eve Arnold
Quote #238
"A studio session ... provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre."
Eve Arnold
Quote #239
"I’ve felt, for some time, that the next new hard in photography is the true potential of photography. That is exploring the human soul. Creating in photographs great passion."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #266
"My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea."
Edward Weston
Quote #274
"I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera."
Edward Weston
Quote #275
"My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me."
Edward Weston
Quote #276
"The payment for me has always been in the doing. I didn't get into [photography] for a job."
Michael Zagaris
Quote #282
"Pay no heed to the average photographer's remarks upon "flat" and "weak" negatives. Probably he is flat, weak, stale, and unprofitable; your negative may be first-rate, and probably is if he does not approve of it."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Quote #289
"I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph."
Berenice Abbott
Quote #291
"The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography."
Berenice Abbott
Quote #294
"I didn't decide to be a photographer, I just happened to fall into it. "
Berenice Abbott
Quote #295
"My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it."
Sam Abell
Quote #296
"Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me. "
Sam Abell
Quote #297
"Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made."
Sam Abell
Quote #299
"My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady. "
Sam Abell
Quote #300
"And that desire--the strong desire to take pictures--is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully--and the evidence that other photographers have done so--that keep us taking pictures."
Sam Abell
Quote #302
"A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes."
Sam Abell
Quote #304
"In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #306
"Photography is nothing--it's life that interests me."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #307
"If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. "
Lewis Hine
Quote #310
"I wanted to show the thing that had to be corrected: I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated."
Lewis Hine
Quote #313
"I have always thought that if I could turn back the pages of history and photograph one man, my choice would be Moses."
Margaret Bourke-White
Quote #314
"Out in the field I try not to hold expectations. I try to achieve an openness. The senses heighten so that I am totally immersed in what's happening at the moment. I want to be receptive to an image coming together."
Keith Lazelle
Quote #315
"My photographs are not planned or composed in advance and I do not anticipate that the onlooker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on his mind--something has been accomplished."
Robert Frank
Quote #316
"I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help."
Ruth Bernhard
Quote #318
"Woman has been the target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman, has been my mission."
Ruth Bernhard
Quote #322
"Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #324
"When I’m ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I’m interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without."
Ansel Adams
Quote #326
"In fact, when I am out searching, I never have a set idea of what it is I'm looking for. I simply seek, occasionally finding exactly what it is I wasn't seeking. For me, that's the time I learn something new about life: When I discover a new path, a new way of seeing, a new reason for continuing my search."
Jeff T. Alu
Quote #329
"To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft."
John Szarkowski
Quote #330
"You have a lifetime to learn technique. But I can teach you what is more
important than technique, how to see; learn that and all you have to do
afterwards is press the shutter."
Garry Winogrand
Quote #331
"Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the picture as judgment that the photograph is good."
Garry Winogrand
Quote #334
"For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film…if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better."
Garry Winogrand
Quote #335
"There are no photographs while I'm reloading .
[Response to how he felt about missing photographs while he reloaded his camera with film.]"
Garry Winogrand
Quote #336
"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. "
Ansel Adams
Quote #337
"I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before."
Robert Mapplethorpe
Quote #339
"I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand."
Robert Mapplethorpe
Quote #352
"I don't really remember the day when I stood behind my camera with Henry Kissinger on the other side. I am sure he doesn't remember it either. But this photograph is here now to prove that no amount of kindness on my part could make this photograph mean exactly what he.. or even I.. wanted it to mean. It's a reminder of the wonder and terror that is a photograph."
Richard Avedon
Quote #341
"I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible."
Richard Avedon
Quote #345
"I think the best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed."
Anne Geddes
Quote #346
"I photograph from the heart. I adore little babies and I think that shows. My images are really very positive, very simple, and from the heart. Babies speak a universal language."
Anne Geddes
Quote #349
"I have a deep respect and love for these tiny humans, and I hope to convey in my images a measure of the beauty that exists in all children."
Anne Geddes
Quote #351
"I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It's always little altars."
Robert Mapplethorpe
Quote #353
"I hate good taste. It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person."
Helmut Newton
Quote #354
"The photographs don't arouse me. All I can think about is the hard work it took to make them."
Helmut Newton
Quote #355
"Some people's photography is an art. Not mine. Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already."
Helmut Newton
Quote #356
"The point of my photography has always been to challenge myself, to go a little further than my Germanic discipline and Teutonic nature would traditionally permit me to.
"
Helmut Newton
Quote #357
"At forty-two I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn’t rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted."
Wynn Bullock
Quote #360
"Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic."
Edward Weston
Quote #368
"Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour."
Edward Weston
Quote #369
"I see no reason for recording the obvious."
Edward Weston
Quote #370
"Anything that excites me, for any reason, I will photograph: not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual, nor indulging in extraordinary technique to attract attention."
Edward Weston
Quote #371
"My way of working – I start with no preconceived idea... discovery excites me to focus – then rediscovery though the lens – final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned complete in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure – the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation – the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all I saw and felt through the camera. "
Edward Weston
Quote #372
"The... arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. ...I say that chance enters into all branches of art: a chance word or phrase starts a new trend of thought in a writer, a chance sound may bring a new melody to a musician, a chance combination of lines, new composition to a painter. ...Chance – which in reality is not chance – but being ready, attuned to one's surroundings – and grasp my opportunity.... "
Edward Weston
Quote #373
"What I feel is that the picture-taking process, anyway a greater part of it, is an intuitive thing. You can't go out and logically plan a picture, but when you come back, reason then takes over and verifies or rejects whatever you've done. So that's why I say that reason and intuition are not in conflict--they strengthen each other."
Wynn Bullock
Quote #381
"I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a 'record shot'. My first thought is always of light."
Galen Rowell
Quote #386
"It is light that reveals, light that obscures, light that communicates. It is light I "listen" to. The light late in the day has a distinct quality, as it fades toward the darkness of evening. After sunset there is a gentle leaving of the light, the air begins to still, and a quiet descends. I see magic in the quiet light of dusk. I feel quiet, yet intense energy in the natural elements of our habitat. A sense of magic prevails. A sense of mystery. It is a time for contemplation, for listening - a time for making photographs.
"
John Sexton
Quote #388
"Photography is my passion."
Alfred Stieglitz
Quote #394
"To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures. Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters..."
Harry Callahan
Quote #395
"When gifts are given to me through my camera, I accept them graciously."
Minor White
Quote #399
"A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people."
Annie Leibovitz
Quote #401
"I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil."
W. Eugene Smith
Quote #402
"Writing is not about words. Painting is not about pigment. Music is not about tones. As long as photographers insist that photography is about photographs, the art is limited and self-containing!"
Brooks Jensen
Quote #403
"If you take photos, don't speak, don't write, don't analyze yourself, and don't answer any questions."
Robert Doisneau
Quote #404
"When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty to them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has almost the embodiment of a prayer."
Julia Margaret Cameon
Quote #406
"To do a portrait today, I decide how close I can get to my subject. First, of course, mentally or intellectually, then in the viewfinder. Music cues the subject and me when to shoot. The music played during a photography session is most important -- stimulating to the subject and to me. As in a film, the music builds or becomes quiet, romantic; just one note sets the actor up to emote for his audience. I want a reciprocal portrait, not a bureaucratic one,"
Victor Skrebneski
Quote #407
"My picture-taking and picture-making are as different as day and night. I take my pictures quite unconsciously. I see them in my mind and ... it is done without thinking. I feel the exposure. My only concern is to be ready for that moment of truth, always ready to grasp it quickly before it's gone, or to wait patiently until that split-second when it appears."
Nell Dorr
Quote #410
"There are as many photographs possible from a single negative as the artist can imagine. I can never bear to finish with a negative, to say, 'This is it.' Tomorrow I can come and make new pictures from that negative. This is the thing I love most of all: the making of the final picture. No one else can do that for me, nor do I ever completely satisfy myself."
Nell Dorr
Quote #412
"Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts."
Walker Evans
Quote #418
"The function of the photographer is to help people understand the world around them."
Sid Grossman
Quote #419
"We start out with the mistaken notion that it's somehow about us. That this image is an expression of our ego. .. Until you get past that point. Until you start to realize that photography has to be about someone or something else, do you start getting into the realm of doing photography that anybody else is really going to care about. ... In order for the rest of the world to care, your photography has to be about something that's relevant."
Stewart Harvey
Quote #421
"What is the single most important factor of making a connection with a viewer? ... It is, quote honestly, not your photograph. It is the state of mind of the viewer. ... One of the greatest challenges we have as photographers is putting our work in front of people at at time when their mind is receptive to photographic artwork. When their mind is receptive to seeing what it is that we are presenting."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #422
"Learning something about the history of photography and finding somebody that spoke to me esthetically was a very important part of my discovering this passion in my life."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #424
"I think that's part of the confusion of photography too. Is the fact that the role of photographer can be both objective observer and creator of something."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #428
"There are two kinds of photographers: those who compose pictures and those who take them. The former work in studios. For the latter, the studio is the world… For them, the ordinary doesn’t exist: every thing in life is a source of nourishment."
Ernst Haas
Quote #429
"I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing. "
Alfred Stieglitz
Quote #435
"We should never forget as creative photographers that our creative vision may survive us by tens or maybe even hundreds of years. And that what we are creating is not just a photography, but a legacy of our minds and our creativity."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #441
"So, it is necessary to understand this image in it's time, or it gets completely mis-understood in our time. So maybe, we photographers need to think about this and know that our images are going to have to be explained 50, 100, 200, or 500 years from now. Just like Shakespeare or Renaissance paintings need to be explained to us today."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #444
"The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy … people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #446
"When the pain of not making the photograph you see exceeds the pain involved in making the photograph, the time has come to go to work"
Tillman Crane
Quote #448
"The process of seeing the scene and visualizing how it could appear as a photograph is the thing that I most enjoy about photography, and seeing the final print is anticlimactic because I know in advance what it will look like."
Michael A. Smith
Quote #449
"The camera is my third eye. When I pick it up, I feel like I have an outlet for expressing how I see the world. It is a tool that lays the foundation for my work..."
Fred Miranda
Quote #452
"Give half a dozen men the same camera, lenses and plates, and send them to the same place to do the same thing, and all the results will be alike, or so nearly alike as to reveal the real mechanicalness of photography. Yet, curiously enough, this is just one of the most difficult things a photographer can be set to do, to exactly repeat himself, or another. He may use the identical apparatus, know the subject perfectly, and yet be totally unable to bring away an exact replica."
Frederick H. Evans
Quote #454
" They ... asked me: 'How do you make your pictures?' I was puzzled ... I said, I don't know, it's not important."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #455
"My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain."
Helmut Newton
Quote #458
"I believe that photography loves banal objects, and I love the life of objects."
Josef Sudek
Quote #459
"...everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings... To capture some of this - I suppose that's lyricism. "
Josef Sudek
Quote #460
"I've always wanted to be aware of what's going on around me, and I've wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into and reporting on the life of my own time."
Paul Strand
Quote #462
"The more time I spend making picture, the more time I spend printing picture, the more time I spend working with pictures the greater the chances are that I'll be witj the camera or in the dark room when the creative muse strikes. Then the challenge is to simple be receptive to it."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #467
"All of these images, all these computer files, all these negatives that I keep all these years are a sort of cholesterol that clog up the arteries and get in the way of being to focusing on the really good images and really good negatives that I made. So I'm starting to throw out more and more. And as I do so, it's starting to feel really terrific."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #475
"I always choose an area that is of personal interest, but I don't plan my travels in detail. There are so many variables one cannot predict: the changing light, weather, personal mood, and often just plain luck. Of course, you must have a starting point, so I establish some fixed points then improvise as I go. In many cases the locations seem to choose me."
Josef Hoflehner
Quote #479
"His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] has told me, urgently and repeatedly, that he thinks my photographs are crap. His exact words were, 'These photos are of poor quality. Why is there no sharp focus? There is no clarity!' I said, 'But your Holiness, it's Goyaesque.' And he said, 'No! It's out of focus!'"
Richard Gere
Quote #480
"We pass the billboard and I console myself in two ways. First, I know that most photographs taken are a gamble at best. Second and more important: I remind myself to find the pleasure in this moment, a time in which the red sky passes to black, children create unanticipated rhymes, and the stars fall closer to earth."
Laura McPhee
Quote #481
"The list of photographs that I am missing while I sit on airport runways, teach classes or spend hours in the studio makes my head spin. It’s almost as if I can actually sense all the great pictures that I’m missing at a given moment. It’s times like those that remind me to be very productive when I do get behind-the-camera time."
Brian Ulrich
Quote #482
"No image, however accomplished, could have captured the agonizing poignancy of that moment. It was a moment to be lived, not framed, analysed or reduced in any way."
Simon Roberts
Quote #483
"All photographers talk about these missed pictures. My friend Pam once said to me in a conversation about these “Ben, a teacher I had once said that when you die there is a little room up in heaven you are led to. In it are all the pictures you got wrong or missed taking.”"
Benjamin Donaldson
Quote #484
"As a photographer you are judged on only one criteria: having taken a photo. Everything after that is subjective bullshit. So, having not taken a picture of something makes you no longer a photographer but more a slack jawed gawker. That's what sets photographers apart from eyewitnesses, we have a camera."
Matt Salacuse
Quote #485
"You are a photographer, and have spent much of every day drifting into the unfamiliar. When you're waiting for a train, you find yourself waking up into the same station you didn't know you were asleep in. Suddenly everything warrants at least a hmmm... The camera is an amnesiac, constantly, comically and tragically, looking at a new world, and its amnesia is contagious. "
Tim Davis
Quote #486
"A picture, ready made, as easy as peristalsis. This is the corpse you're always fantasizing finding in the weeds when you're out shooting and the world doesn't show up, the abandoned Warhol in an alley, the K-Mart bursting into flames. Photographers dream in content."
Tim Davis
Quote #487
"There have also been many times that I just wasn't paying attention clearly enough to compose the right picture. There are lots of those – they call them 'seconds,' I suppose.
But there are things I cared more deeply about, that I saw or experienced when I was young. These things, and the yearning to somehow recapture them, figure strongly into my mindset as a photographer."
Lisa Kereszi
Quote #489
"In these days of sprawling photographic means, no greater paradox exists than this episode of negation: a lens that is not a camera, used to compose an image that will never be a photograph. Discreet, reliable and reflexive, my own blinking eye is the lens I use to honor the image of a treasured and Elusive being."
Rachael Dunville
Quote #490
"While I have my doubts that photographs in themselves are intrusive, I know for certain that the act of making them can be felt by everyone in the room. My experience with family photographs is that the future is appreciative of the act of making pictures, while the present tends to be self conscious and skeptical. During the moment a photograph is made the camera is reluctantly tolerated. It isn’t until much later that the tolerance turns to love; a love of recognition, acknowledgment, and memory."
Todd Deutsch
Quote #491
"There is always a subjective aspect in landscape art, something in the picture that tells us as much about who is behind the camera as about what is in front of it."
Robert Adams
Quote #492
"I'd really rather leave it to others to say what they see in it and to see if I've put something into my photographs beyond a mere recording. Yes, I've chosen the camera position, how I'm going to print the negative, the angel of the lens, what I'm going to include and exclude in the composition, so on and so forth. But, I'm still photographing a work of art, and I would rather leave it to others to comment on my work, as I just left it to you."
Bruce Barnbaum
Quote #495
"There is a lesson here for young photographers; you may not realize how important keeping that work is going to be, because 25 to 30 years later you might discover images that you want to print. Don't throw away your negatives!"
Brooks Jensen
Quote #497
"...I always feel it's necessary to look at my images from two distances. Here is my criterion: If I can look at it from a distance and then come up close but find nothing more to see, it's printed too large. It's not giving me any new information when I come up to it."
Bruce Barnbaum
Quote #498
"Coffee cups were still on the counter along with scribbled notes and mildewed receipts. For hours I quietly photographed what ca,e to feel like artifacts - leaving everything exactly as I had found it. Like an archaeologist at a dig, I became lost in what was left behind, trying to discover the lives that ad passed through the gin by sifting throught what remained."
Jenny Ellerbe
Quote #504
"Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature."
Paul Caponigro
Quote #510
"At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'."
Paul Caponigro
Quote #511
"By some special graciousness of fate I am deposited -- as all good photographers like to be -- in the right place at the right time. Go into it as young as possible. Bring all the asset you have and play to win."
Margaret Bourke-White
Quote #514
"As photographers, we live through things so swiftly. All our experience and training is focused toward snatching off the highlights... That all significant perfect moment, so essential to capture, is often highly perishable. There may be little opportunity to probe deeper."
Margaret Bourke-White
Quote #516
"We are in a privileged and sometimes happy position. We see a great deal of the world. Our obligation is to pass it on to others."
Margaret Bourke-White
Quote #517
"But I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work."
Bill Brandt
Quote #521
"It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country. Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field. It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual’s temperament and environment."
Bill Brandt
Quote #522
"I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work. Indeed, I feel the simplest approach can often be most effective. A subject placed squarely in the center of the frame, if attention is not distracted from it by fussy surroundings, has a simple dignity which makes it all the more impressive."
Bill Brandt
Quote #523
"By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule. "
Bill Brandt
Quote #524
"My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity. To indicate the ideal proportion, to reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal."
Ruth Bernhard
Quote #525
"Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush. It is as vital as the model herself. Profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. Light I acknowledge as the energy upon which all life on this planet depends."
Ruth Bernhard
Quote #527
"One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud."
Diane Arbus
Quote #529
"All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty."
Andre Bazin
Quote #530
"...the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models. (referring to his famous photo "Pepper #30")"
Edward Weston
Quote #539
"I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite."
Ansel Adams
Quote #540
"The creative photographer is a seer, in both senses of that word. In short, the art of seeing is what defines the creative photographer as compared to the merely competent one."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #545
"I photographed the entire thing in color because to photograph it in black and white would be to keep it as a tragedy. Because there is a tragic element to photographing, in this case not war, but the collapse. It was just destruction. (Referring to his Ground Zero photographs taken in 2001)"
Joel Meyerowitz
Quote #549
"Then I thought, Whoa. If there are no photographs, then there is no history. I'm going to get in there. I'm going to make these pictures. We need a record. (Referring to a New York City Police Officer telling him 'no photographs buddy, this is a crime scene' on 9/11 at Ground Zero in New York City)"
Joel Meyerowitz
Quote #553
"The two ideas are antithetical. Insofar as photography is (or should be) about the world, the photographer counts for little, but insofar as it is the instrument of intrepid, questioning subjectivity, the photographer is all."
Susan Sontag
Quote #557
"As I progressed further with my project, it became obvious that it was really unimportant where I chose to photograph. The particular place simply provided an excuse to produce work... you can only see what you are ready to see - what mirrors your mind at that particular time."
George Tice
Quote #563
"As a matter of fact, nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love."
Alfred Stieglitz
Quote #566
"All young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death."
Roland Barthes
Quote #571
"If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share - animation. They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it."
Robert Adams
Quote #572
"When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do not know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does. Each photograph that works is a revelation to its supposed creator."
Robert Adams
Quote #573
"Part of the reason that these attempts at explanation fail, I think, is that photographers, like all artists, choose their medium because it allows them the most fully truthful expression of their vision... as Robert Frost told a person who asked him what one of his poems meant, 'You want me to say it worse?'"
Robert Adams
Quote #574
"...I felt that photography ought to start with and remain faithful to the appearance of the world, and in so doing record contradictions. The greatest pictures would then... find wholeness in the torn world."
Robert Adams
Quote #578
"It is just as important to bring people the evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a document of ugliness, squalor, and despair."
Ansel Adams
Quote #580
"Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities: geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work of people like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact - the affection for life."
Robert Adams
Quote #583
"The job of the photographer, in my view, is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope. This is not to say that he is unconcerned with the truth. "
Robert Adams
Quote #585
"When you pose for a photograph, it's behind a smile that isn't yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people."
Richard Avedon
Quote #591
"And if you can find out something about the laws of your own growth and vision as well as those of photography you may be able to relate the two, create an object that has a life of its own, which transcends craftsmanship.
That is a long road, and because it must be your own road nobody can teach it to you or find it for you.
There are no shortcuts, no rules."
Paul Strand
Quote #592
"My creative process begins when I get out with the camera and interact with the world. A camera is truly a license to explore. There are no uninteresting things. There are just uninterested people."
Jerry Uelsmann
Quote #593
"Well, I do think, particularly the way I work, the better images occur when you’re moving to the fringes of your own understanding. That's where self-doubt and risk taking are likely to occur. It’s when you trust what’s happening at a non-intellectual non-conscious level that you can produce work that later resonates, often in a way that you can’t articulate a response to."
Jerry Uelsmann
Quote #594
"I'm a photographer, obviously. My chosen tool for understanding life, and communicating the results of this search to others, is the camera."
David Hurn
Quote #599
"My advice is: learn from the best or teach yourself. And do not bother at all if you do not have an exaggerated sense of curiosity."
David Hurn
Quote #600
"This idea fascinates me. The idea that a few seconds of watching a photographer in action can tell you his/her status in the medium. And it's true. If you watch a photographer of merit working an event he/she does not look like an amateur..."
David Hurn
Quote #601
"...one day I was speculating on how I would like to look back on life and I decided I wanted to feel that I was a photographer rather than a teacher. As simple as that."
David Hurn
Quote #602
"Photography is inextricably linked with life; the photographer is not invisibly behind the camera but projecting a life-attitude through the lens to create an interference pattern with the image. Who he is, what he believes, not only becomes important to know intellectually, but also becomes revealed emotionally and visibly through a body of work."
Bill Jay
Quote #604
"It is the purpose of life that each of us strives to become actually what he or she is potentially. Each photographer, then, should be obsessed with stretching towards that goal through an understanding of others and the world we inhabit. When that happens, the results, like photographs, are really the expressions of the life of the maker."
David Hurn
Quote #605
"Think clearly, act sensibly, commit yourself to caring and work hard in order to discover joy. Then give the images back to the world from which they were taken."
Bill Jay
Quote #606
"I never claim my photographs reveal some definitive truth. I claim that this is what I saw and felt about the subject at the time the pictures were made. That's all that any photographer can claim. I do not know any great photographer who would presume otherwise."
David Hurn
Quote #608
"I think of myself as a reportage photographer. I like the word. It implies a personal account of an observed event with connotations of subjectivity but honesty. It is eye-witness photography."
David Hurn
Quote #609
"You are not a photographer because you are interested in photography."
David Hurn
Quote #611 |
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