On Photography Quotes

The only way to understand something is to be confronted by something that is difficult to understand.

The contest between form and content is what, is what art is about - it's art history. That's what basically everybody has ever contended with. The problem is uniquely complex in still photography.

Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.

Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument.

I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.

Actually, when I first started dabbling in photography, I was still working for my parents as a salesman.

The whole world is there for you. Gifts will happen, but only if you are patient with life itself, the shooting process, and your own limitations.

There is no bad light. There is spectacular light and difficult light. It's up to you to use the light you have.

One color alone means nothing. I acts as in a vacuum, with no other colors to relate to. It is only when colors relate to other colors that the fun begins.

It's my obligation to take out all the 'wrong' pictures.

It's a lot easier to take pictures if you always have the camera with you.

There really isn't anything that you could call 'bad' color. It all has to do with the amount of color you use and in what context it appears.

You have to learn not only from your failures. You must also learn from your successes.

You have to let the past successes go, or you'll never be able to see anew.

Forget what it was. Look at what it is.

Keep your mind open. You may very well learn something new about yourself and your pictures.

Sometimes without shooting a picture germinates in your head. Other times, you keep taking pictures of the same thing and watch the images mature and grow.

Never put lettering in your photos unless you want it read.

When we are given gifts, we must be quick and able to accept them.

Each picture you take has power as long as it brings experience to the person who’s looking at it.

If you don't have a camera, the best thing you can do is describe how great it looked.

We don't experience light, color, and gesture in a vacuum. We experience it in contexts.

Every picture should have a place you can go, a home, a climax.

The problem suggests the solution.

There are rules about perception, but not about photography.

I wanted not to make photographs that would be art, but art that would be photography.

The creative process can sustain itself throughout the entire celebration of photography.

No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.

Photography extends our perception allowing us to see and experience more - second hand.

The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it.

I would never censor something to please someone. I don't play games.

I don't know if I can articulate how I feel. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would make it here.

At a fundamental level photography is much like pointing, and all of us occasionally point at things: look at that, look at that sailboat, look at that tree, etc. etc.

All my film ideas and subjects have come from photography.

There are plenty of beautiful girls who don't photograph well.

Why in the world would anyone want to photograph an old woman like me?

Photography is like an open book to the world.

In the business of portrait photography, one must combine the artist and the craftsman.

When you're shy, a camera becomes an entry into life. It was a kind of shield I could hide my shyness behind, and it allowed me to become an active observer rather than a passive one.

There are movies that change the whole way in which films are made, like Klute, where Gordon Willis’s photography on the film is so textured, and, they said, too dark.

Photography is like a river with a thousand streams that never converge.

WhenIWasYourAge: It took a week to learn whether your photos came out okay.

The more equipment you shlep around the less you will enjoy the equipment you shlep around.

Kids and cameras are a big things with me. Find a kid who digs cameras and share one simple photo tip with her.

The world of your photography is limitless-just like your backyard.

Emailing a meaningful photograph to someone who is not expecting it can change a relationship forever.

I am a big fan of photography, more of being behind the camera - so when I get the opportunity to work with such great photographers, I always try and learn from their technique.

I joke around sometimes and say that the DP [director of photography] is like a shrink for the director, but there's some truth in there.

When you pose for a photograph, it's behind a smile that isn't yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.

Whatever else a photograph may be about, it is always about time.