T.M. McNally Quotes

Our pictures are our footprints. It’s the best way to tell people we were here.

Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.

Always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It's the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.

Unpredictability. Accidents. Not good when you’re engaging in, say, brain surgery, but when lighting...wonderful!

You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles.

If you're not having fun, your pictures will reflect that.

The most important piece of equipment in your bag is your attitude

A career in photography is a journey without a destination.

If you view your life as a piece of fabric or a tapestry, the photography is the stitching. It keeps everything together.

John Loengard, the picture editor at Life, always used to tell me, ”If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.

Young people have got to start their own theaters, really. All good theater is a kind of mom-and-pop operation. Start your own theater.

There are so many rules about play writing. I'd have a nervous breakdown if I followed them.

To me, pictures are about memory.

When shooting a story about someone, their hands should always be on your list to shoot.

I can't tell you how many pictures I've missed just 'cause I've been so hell bent on getting the shot I think I want.

The camera’s not a camera, really. It’s an open door we need to walk through. It’s up to us to keep moving our feet.

I may think I have inalienable rights to be alive and happy but I don't - life is a blessing.

Technology promises to let us do anything from anywhere with anyone. But it also drains us as we try to do everything everywhere. In a surprising twist, relentless connection leads to a new solitude.

I'm of the school 'Write what you know.' You can educate yourself, but the best writing usually comes from the heart.

In those days, you had to like one or the other. You couldn't like Sutherland AND Callas.

We professional athletes are very lucky. Unlike most mortals, we are given the privilege of dying twice - once when we retire and again when death takes us.

The whole point of life is to maximize your emotional income. Getting that ball and going is a tremendous physical thrill, an ego thrill, a personal power satisfaction.

At some point, you have to sit down and face the page alone. At some point, the final decisions need to be yours. At some point, you have to give yourself deadlines and stick to them.

I like to surprise myself. I've always been attracted to projects where I don't know how they're going to turn out.

Technology has eliminated the basement darkroom and the whole notion of photography as an intense labor of love for obsessives and replaced them with a sense of immediacy and instant gratification.

With me, writing is 60% imagination, 30% people you know and 10% you don't know where it comes from.

For capitalism to develop, customary ties between people and the land must be severed, and communal obligations among people disrupted.

Secrets, my mother told me once, are just stories turned inside out.

Remember to have a little faith. When you die, I believe, God isn't going to ask you what you published. God's going to ask you what you wrote.