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Quotes by Photographer
"The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box."
Act,
2
"I've been with Life now for seventeen years and I have written several articles for them and will be doing more writing and do at least two assignments a year besides my writing."
2
"No matter how fast I could do it with the digital camera I don't think I would get the same thing out of it. The passion I have for formulating an idea stands alone. It is the important essence of what I do."
2
"Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment."
2
"Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space."
2
"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."
2
"What I had to prove was that I had a dedication and a desire and a passion to do the work and everything else would fall in place because I have a vision that I want to portray and it did and I do it. I don't sell anything."
2
"Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment."
2
"What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional."
2
"I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul."
2
"It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them."
2
"Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical."
2
"There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement."
2
"That's why I felt so at home when I went to Africa. It didn't matter that I was halfway around the world in a foreign country, because all those elements are universal. And I think that's one thing about my work: It's universal."
2
"Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness."
2
"What I mean by photographing as a participant rather than observer is that I'm not only involved directly with some of the activities that I photograph, such as mountain climbing, but even when I'm not I have the philosophy that my mind and body are part of the natural world."
2
"I always thought security was a joke at New York airports, and in U.S. airports to begin with. You can go through any European or Middle Eastern airport and things are a lot tougher."
2
"There's no question that photographs communicate more instantly and powerfully than words do, but if you want to communicate a complex concept clearly, you need words, too."
2
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian."
2
"To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things."
2
"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."
2
"If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better."
2
"I have many times thought I did the wrong thing, but the reason was not to be a medical doctor - it was just to have the information. But then, maybe I was wrong, I don't know."
2
"I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing."
2
"You work on an idea, your first interpretation is very raw and you work it and you work it and it gets polished and polished. It gets to a certain level and then it comes down off that peak."
2
"That's not to say that some day I won't go outside again, but I'm having a great time working on this process."
2
"I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable."
2
"When you start out, you're not really aware. I didn't have a sense of photographic history."
2
"I'm not photographing the model in the classic sense; the model is playing a part in my photographs. It's more like theater. I always work with models I know, and I let them participate in deciding how to act their part."
2
"The war correspondent has his stake - his life - in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute."
2
"What I particularly liked was that, coming from California and not being involved in the New York scene, I developed my personal way, in my own way, at my own pace."
2
"I don't like to work with assistants. I'm already one too many; the camera alone would be enough."
Work,
2
"If somebody's pointing a trembling finger at your pants and saying you shouldn't be doing that, follow that finger back, go up the arm and look at the head that's behind it, because there's almost always something fairly woolly in there."
2
"The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony."
2
"I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position."
2
"I think knowing people by first names, not by what they do sexually, is really what it's about. Not being afraid. Fear is the enemy. I've always been comfortable with being gay."
2
"One fifth of human kind depend on fish to live. Today now 70 percent of the fish stock are over-exploited. According to FAO if we don't change our system of fishing the main sea resources will be gone in 2050. We don't want to believe what we know."
2
"And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well."
2
"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."
2
"Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...'; And then do it."
2
"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."
2
"They often ask me to shoot for them. But I say no. I think an old guy like me ought not take pages away from young photographers who need the exposure."
Old,
2
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