On Photography Quotes
There are things I back off from trying to talk about, you know. Particularly my own work. Also, there may be things better left unsaid. At times I'd much rather talk about other (people's) work.
Photography teaches us to see, and we can see whatever we wish. When I take a photograph, I make a wish. I was always looking for beauty.
The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.
Working from photos makes you a little more analytical, a little more cerebral, because you're less connected to the intensity of life.
I don't mistrust reality, of which I know next to nothing. I mistrust the picture of reality conveyed to us by our senses, which is imperfect and circumscribed.
I've been a photographer all these years... I haven't been in my own darkroom for 10 years.
For me a photograph is most successful when it doesn't answer all the questions and it leaves something to be desired.
DAGUERREOTYPE Will take the place of painting. (See PHOTOGRAPHY.) (From The Dictionary of Received Ideas, assembled from notes Flaubert made in the 1870s.)
I often think we do not take this business of photography in a sufficiently serious spirit. Issuing a photograph is like marriage: you can only undo the mischief with infinite woe.
Every time I talked about making a picture I didn't do it. I had already done it - talking about it! I quit talking.
A picture is like a prayer; you're offering a prayer to get something, and in a sense it's like a gift of God because you have practically no control-at least I don't.
Just like zillions of children, album covers educated and informed me, and certainly did I later transpose organically, rather than by intent, those principles both in fashion design and photography.
The danger lies in unconventional experiments signaling for a general license to do as they please, and pass off sloppy workmanship as creative intention.
Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone.
Photographier: c'est mettre sur la meme ligne de mire la tete, l'oeil et le coeur.
...it is seldom indeed that a composition which was poor when the picture was taken can be improved by reshaping it in the dark room.
It seems dangerous to be a portrait artist who does commissions for clients because everyone wants to be flattered, so they pose in such a way that there's nothing left of truth.
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.
In photography, you've got to be quick, quick, quick, quick...Like an animal and a prey.
One has to tiptoe lightly and steal up to one's quarry; you don't swish the water when you are fishing.
Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood.
It's pre-photography, a fossilization of time, Americans have done the Zen garden to death. I wanted to do something different.
Painting requires skill. Photography is created by the camera, and one cannot fully control what the camera sees. So people take many photographs because several must always be discarded.
A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.
Photography is something you learn to love very quickly. I know that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken and I will take them all.
I think that photography has allowed me to have a voice. I used to stutter, and once I overcame that struggle, it felt good to tell people they were beautiful and special.
Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography?
Thus, during the winter of 2003 I ventured into a new arena as a professional photographer.
It's important to realize that the images are everywhere, not just where you want or expect them to be.
A photographer's art is more in his perceptions than his execution. In a painter, I think the perception is only the first step, and then you have a kind of hard road of execution.
I'm really very concerned with helping to create an attitude of freedom and daring toward the craft of photography.
I had done a lot of rock 'n' roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock 'n' roll bands.
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.
If you're going to paint from photos, make sure you've painted for at least ten years.
Whatever it takes to get the image to reach that level is what that photographer needs to do.
I don't like the discussions about whether photography is an art. Even though I think that if it would be just a craft I would not have stayed with it all my life.
If I had to pick a single word to describe what my pictures are all about, I would say 'secrets.' As a child I always had a secret world and my favorite book was “A Secret Garden.
