top of page
.png){kind=small}
Photography Quotes
"Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk."
79
"When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration."
75
"Wherever there is light, one can photograph."
70
"The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much."
66
"A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words."
61
"Wanting to take a light camera with me when I climb or do mountain runs has kept me using exclusively 35 mm."
60
"George Lucas wanted this moving camera for all of the photography in Star Wars. He was willing to take a risk with the concepts that I advanced with regard to ways for doing that."
59
"You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery."
58
"Contrast is what makes photography interesting."
53
"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."
52
"Actually, when I first started dabbling in photography, I was still working for my parents as a salesman."
52
"I am very much aware of the visual side of things. I do a lot of photography. I often take Polaroids of things that strike me as visually interesting, just to remember them and perhaps use later."
52
"We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium."
52
"I rode it once, which was up the driveway in the opening credits of the show. I didn't know how to stop it. I actually nearly killed the director of photography, and I smashed into the sound truck."
52
"It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators."
51
"Once you get the right image the details aren't that important."
49
"My surprises come usually once I start rolling and photographing."
48
"A woman said to me when she first sat down, You're photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?"
47
"The closer the source of light is to a subject, the broader the beams are."
47
"Never boss people around. It's more important to click with people than to click the shutter."
47
"It's important to know that if you are dealing with shadows."
46
"Videos are more like photography. It's not as much about trying to tell a story as it is creating images."
45
"Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true."
45
"I think that cognitive scientists would support the view that our visual system does not directly represent what is out there in the world and that our brain constructs a lot of the imagery that we believe we are seeing."
45
"The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses."
45
"I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself."
45
"At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way."
44
"Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child."
44
"When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward."
42
"And I remember walking in there and, I must say, I was quite unnerved the closer I got to it."
42
"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."
42
"I always say that I don't want to be sentimental, that the photographs shouldn't be sentimental, and yet, I am conscious of my sentimentality."
42
"I told the students that whatever they did in class was for the wastebasket."
42
"My lifestyle is bizarre, but the only thing you need to know is where the darkroom is."
41
"In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative."
41
"Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one."
41
"For me, the most important thing I learned was just honing my eye. I think I had a good eye."
41
"I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing."
41
"There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are."
40
"Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does."
40
"Today my passion is still black and white. Today if I have an array of cameras in front of me the one I would reach for that I would feel most comfortable with would be a 4 X 5 View camera. I was once working in a sort of soft light situation."
39
"I became interested in photography when I found my own sketching was inadequate."
39
"Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye."
39
"The problem of direct colour photography has been facing us since the turn of the last century."
38
"She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes."
38
"Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer."
37
"I've been working with photography for many years."
37
"One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind."
37
bottom of page