Photo Quotes ArchiveQuotes about Photography > Technique (62 quotes)
"My theory of composition? Simple: do not release the shutter until everything in the viewfinder feels just right."
Ernst Haas
Quote #57
"Leica, schmeica. The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to see."
Ernst Haas
Quote #58
"Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships."
Ansel Adams
Quote #118
"Don't be creative when you should be mechanical, and don't be mechanical when you should be creative."
Fred Picker
Quote #128
"How to make a large format exposure: Close the lens. Set the f-stop and shutter speed. Cock the shutter. Test fire the shutter (that proves the lens is closed). Cock shutter. Check f-stop. Put in film holder. Pull dark slide. Shade lens with dark slide. Wait for magic. Fire shutter. Insert dark slide. Breathe."
Fred Picker
Quote #129
"If it is not an interesting picture when in focus, it is not going to be a better picture out of focus."
Bill Jay
Quote #130
"If you are intent on drawing or painting on your prints, you must first learn to draw and paint at least as well as you photograph."
Bill Jay
Quote #131
"If you cannot think of anything to say that is useful or enlightening about your images, then don't say anything. There are plenty of other people who would love to put words in your mouth."
Bill Jay
Quote #132
"Available light is any damn light that is available!"
W. Eugene Smith
Quote #147
"If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough."
Robert Capa
Quote #172
"I don't know what good composition is.... Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and other times it has to do with funny mistakes. There's a kind of rightness and wrongness and sometimes I like rightness and sometimes I like wrongness."
Diane Arbus
Quote #191
"You can also see sometimes that the best pictures are the ones where you didn’t try so hard, where you were just enjoying the process – and you didn’t even know why you were making the picture. It felt right. If someone asked, ‘Why are you making this picture?’ you probably couldn’t describe it very well – and that’s why it needs to be a photograph."
John Sexton
Quote #197
"The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer."
Anonymous
Quote #217
"Let your words be few, and your exposures many."
Anonymous
Quote #221
"You're suddenly seeing the coherence and the interconnectedness of everything, left to right, top to bottom, front to back. It's all connected, and, somehow, it's all in balance. And that's, of course, when you go, 'Yes!'."
Henry Wessel
Quote #227
"Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore."
Henry Wessel
Quote #246
"If you let some time go by before considering work that you have done, you move toward a more objective position in judging it. The pleasure of the subjective, physical experience in the world is a more distant memory and less influential."
Henry Wessel
Quote #247
"No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want. "
Ken Rockwell
Quote #252
"Realize that creativity does not work on a clock. ...Do photography (or at least think photography) every day."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #257
"It's nothing but a matter of seeing, thinking, and interest. That's what makes a good photograph. And then rejecting anything that would be bad for the picture. The wrong light, the wrong background, time and so on. Just don't do it, not matter how beautiful the subject is."
Andreas Feininger
Quote #260
"Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed."
Edward Weston
Quote #268
"To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible."
Edward Weston
Quote #271
"Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection..."
Edward Weston
Quote #272
"Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man."
Edward Weston
Quote #277
"When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches."
Edward Weston
Quote #281
"If you can't make the image bigger or more important than what you see, then don't push the button"
Ruth Bernhard
Quote #319
"A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. He's implicated in what's happening, and he has a certain real power over the result."
Richard Avedon
Quote #342
"A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about. "
Richard Avedon
Quote #343
"Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event. During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #366
"Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion...the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate."
Dorothea Lange
Quote #377
"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?""
Ansel Adams
Quote #384
"The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good."
Ansel Adams
Quote #385
"Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #396
"There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made."
Minor White
Quote #400
"You don't know if you've gone far enough until you go too far and then you work back a couple of steps."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #423
"I do not object to retouching, dodging. or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique. "
Alfred Stieglitz
Quote #433
"It is essential, therefore, to approach the subject on tiptoe – even if the subject is still-life. A velvet hand, a hawk’s eye – these we should all have. It’s no good jostling or elbowing. And no photographs taken with the aid of flashlight either, if only out of respect of the actual light – even when there isn’t any of it. Unless a photographer observes such conditions as these, he may become an intolerably aggressive character."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #439
"Not that it difficult to photograph mundane things, but it's difficult to see them as significant. ... The hard thing to do of course is to find a way to photograph a mundane subject or a mundane event in a way that makes it exciting."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #443
"Technique is important only insofar as you must master it in order to communicate what you see."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quote #447
"Look at the photographs, look at them carefully. Let the composition and the subject matter determine the aspect ratio. That's the ultimate authority. Not the camera manufacturer. Not the film manufacturer."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #468
"There is no doubt in my mind that living with a photograph for a while, before you make the final print, will always change the image. Most often, for the better."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #469
"Sometimes the best way to get rid of something that is plaguing your mind is just to photograph it, so that your free to move on."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #471
"If you want to make a photograph special and precious, make a better photograph. The white gloves don't add anything to a bad photograph."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #472
"The craft of photography is the key to good images."
Ansel Adams
Quote #499
"When we're looking at an image - particular one in a publication or one from history - how we would choose to print it is non-sequitur precisely because, in fact, we aren't going to print it. What we have in front of us is the finished piece of work. Therefore, the only important comments that we can make, the only useful comments that we can make, are about the work as it exists now. There is a great deal we can bring to the discussion - our reactions to it, our interpretation of it, the context, the background - all of this is fair game. But, how we would change it in order to improve it seems to me to be fundamentally unimportant, at best, and a silly distraction, at worst."
Brooks Jensen
Quote #505
"If you want to photograph a man spinning, give some thought to why he spins. Understanding for a photographer is as important as the equipment he uses."
Margaret Bourke-White
Quote #515
"In photographing dwarfs, you don't get majesty and beauty. You get dwarfs."
Susan Sontag
Quote #533
"One of the most difficult things any photographer has to decide is where to stand. The technical part of photography is relatively easy compared to the more difficult part of where do we stand, what do we see, what do we look at, what are we interested in. And just as importantly, why."
Jeff Curto
Quote #534
"Camera position can be about how we compose a photograph by how the elements in the frame fall together based on the perspective, or point of view, that we bring to the camera's frame. Or it can relate to the idea of how we think about the way light changes our perspective of a subject."
Jeff Curto
Quote #535
"Maybe the photograph you think is there, really isn't there. But there is always something there to look at, and always something in which you can find an interesting aspect to make a photograph of. "
Jeff Curto
Quote #536
"It’s easy to photograph light reflecting from a surface, the truly hard part is capturing the light in the air."
Walker Evans
Quote #538
"The first picture of his I ever saw was during a lecture at the Rhyl camera club. I was 16 and the speaker was Emrys Jones. He projected the picture upside down. Deliberately, to disregard the subject matter to reveal the composition. It's a lesson I've never forgotten. (referring to Henri Cartier-Bresson)"
Philip Jones Griffiths
Quote #554
"...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude."
Susan Sontag
Quote #559
"And young people who are learning digital skills discover that the real challenge is coming up with an image that resonates, first of all, with your self and hopefully, with an audience. They can learn all these new techniques and think that they’re easier to use, but creating great images isn’t about the tools. "
Jerry Uelsmann
Quote #595
"Editions made sense when people worked with engravings where the plate wore down as prints were made. An early number of the edition had slightly better quality. But that’s not the case with photography. To me, it’s a false way of creating value."
Jerry Uelsmann
Quote #597
"It’s equally hard and labor intensive to create an image on the computer as it is in a darkroom. Believe me. "
Jerry Uelsmann
Quote #598
"Learn from the best; the second raters have nothing to offer."
David Hurn
Quote #603
"Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible"
John Szarkowski
Quote #612
"We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room."
Minor White
Quote #613
"Reaching a 'creative' state of mind thru positive action is considered preferable to waiting for 'inspiration'.
"
Minor White
Quote #614
"Students were taught by doing."
Minor White
Quote #618
"Inventive ideas come from re-contextualizing the past."
Jeff Curto
Quote #620 |
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