Best 2475 quotes in «photography quotes» category

The very act of representation has been so thoroughly challenged in recent years by postmodern theories that it is impossible not to see the flaws everywhere, in any practice of photography. Traditional genres in particular-journalism, documentary studies, and fine-art photography-have become shells, or forms emptied of meaning.

The very best gift... is that anyone can experience those unexpected twinkles of joy that make a magical moment. At these moments, you feel true, deep joy because of a great new insight, a beautiful prospect, or a glimpse into the radiance of another soul. They are the magic moments when life seems better than you ever realized.

The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory.

The viewer must bring their own view to a photograph.

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.

The way in which the photograph records experience is also different from the way of language. Language makes sense only when it is presented as a sequence of propositions. Meaning is distorted when a word or sentence is, as we say, taken out of context; when a reader or listener is deprived of what was said before, and after. But there is no such thing as a photograph taken out of context, for a photograph does not require one. In fact, the point of photography is to isolate images from context, so as to make them visible in a different way.

The way I would describe a pictorial is that it is a picture that makes everybody say ‘Aaaaah,’ with five vowels when they see it. It is something you would like to hang on the wall. The french word ‘photogenique’ defines it better than anything in English. It is a picture which must have quality, drama, and it must, in addition, be as good technically as you can possible make it.

The way men are seen in photography, in fashion, and the way that men look at pictures of themselves has changed in recent years. It is a subject that has come into focus: The masculine image, a man's personal style, changing attitudes to the male face and body.

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.

The work I care about is terribly simple. I observe. I try to entertain. But above all I want my pictures to be emotional. Little else interests me in photography.

The work of the artist is not so much what you say or what you know, it's recognizing what you know. That's what life is about. That's what photography is about. You see something, or you hear someone say something, and you say That is a truth. You know, deep in you. That's when you start shooting.

The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.

The world of the cinema and of painting are very different; precisely, the possibilities of photography and the cinema reside in that unlimited fantasy which is born of things themselves... a piece of sugar can become on the screen larger than an infinite perspective of gigantic buildings.

The world of photography is very self-aware. Everybody is always looking around. So it's quite difficult to stand up with a megaphone and declare, "This is what I think." As a reasonably shy person, I found it difficult to do that.

They were ... pure and unadulterated photographs, and sometimes they hinted at the existence of visual truths that had escaped all other systems of detection.

Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick.

Think clearly, act sensibly, commit yourself to caring and work hard in order to discover joy. Then give the images back to the world from which they were taken.

Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.

Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

This is the way photography can be cruel... in the sense that it describes everything, even the things we are not necessarily aware we're revealing.

This is the gift of the landscape photograph, that the heart finds a place to stand.

This is life. It is everywhere, and it is here for the taking. I am alive and I know this, now, in a more profound way than when I am doing anything else. These sights are ephemeral, fleeting treasures that have been offered to me and to me alone. No other person in the history of the world, anywhere in all of time and space, has been granted this gift to be here in my place. And I am privileged, through the camera, to take this moment away with me. That is why I photograph.

This is the same problem I have with digital photography. The potential is always remarkable. But the medium never settles. Each year there is a better camera to buy and new software to download. The user never has time to become comfortable with the tool. Consequently too much of the work is merely about the technology. The HDR and QTVR fads are good examples. Instead of focusing on the subject, users obsess over RAW conversion, Photoshop plug-ins, and on and on. For good work to develop the technology needs to become as stable and functional as a typewriter.

This recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values is for me the essence of photography; composition should be a constant of preoccupation, being a simultaneous coalition - an organic coordination of visual elements.

This might seem off the track, but an interesting thing to me that others could talk about better than I, but one of the growth areas in photographic education has been the so-called slow photography.

This profession [photography] is deserving of attention and respect equal to that accorded painting, literature, music and architecture.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.

Through photography, both artist and scientist can find a common denominator in their search for the synthesis of modern vision in time, space and structure.

Thus, during the winter of 2003 I ventured into a new arena as a professional photographer.

Time runs and flows and only our death succeeds in catching up with it. Photography is a blade which, in eternity, impales the dazzling moment.

"Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of "going in for photography," you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography; they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all the practice. Most people think they can play tennis, shoot, write novels, and photograph as well as any other person - until they try.

Timothy O'Sullivan was, it seems to me, the greatest of the photographers because he understood nature first as architecture.

To be ready is one thing, to be able to wait is another; but to seize the right moment is everything.

To do justice to modern technology's rigid linear structure, to the lofty gridwork of cranes and bridges, to the dynamism of machines operating at one thousand horsepower - only photography is capable of that. What those who are attached to the painterly style regard as photography's defect, the mechanical reproduction of form - is just what makes it superior to all other means of expression.

To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, more selective, more acute eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world. Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times-the pulse of today. The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will, but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.

Today's photographers think differently. Many can't see real light anymore. They think only in terms of strobe - sure, it all looks beautiful but it's not really seeing. If you have the eyes to see it, the nuances of light are already there on the subject's face. If your thinking is confined to strobe light sources, your palette becomes very mean - which is the reason I photograph only in available light.

To extend the depth of what has been called 'art' into photography requires... making available to the spectator the amazing transformations the subject undergoes to become the photograph.

To make good photographs, to express something, to contribute something to the world he lives in, and to contribute something to the art of photography besides imitations of the best photographers on the market today, that is basic training, the understanding of self.

To know whether photography is or is not an art matters little. What is important is to distinguish between good and bad photography. By good is meant that photography which accepts all the limitations inherent in photographic technique and takes advantage of the possibilities and characteristics the medium offers. By bad photography is mean that which is done, one may say, with a kind of inferiority complex, with no appreciation of what photography itself offers: but on the contrary, recurring to all sorts of imitations.

To make images is a way of ordering one's world, of exploring and understanding one's relationship to existence. ... The images we make are often ahead of our understanding, but to say "yes" to a subject is also to have recognized, however dimly, a part of oneself; to live with that image, to accept its significance is perhaps to grow in understanding.

To me, photography is like a quest, or a pilgrimage, or a hunt. I love painting, I love music, but photography is what has allowed me to get outside of myself.

To me, photography was a completely new medium, and I did not... feel the urge to transfer to it my ideas about painting.

To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.

To me if there's an achievement to lighting and photography in a film it's because nothing stands out, it all works as a piece. And you feel that these actors are in this situation and the audience is not thrown by a pretty picture or by bad lighting.

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

To me, photography is not just a visual art, but something closer to poetry - or at least to some poetry, such as the haiku.

To me, photography is 90% a retrospective experience. There's the part of pursuing the image, and exposing the film, but once you make the exposure, you're always looking backwards in time. I like that aspect of photography.

To me, the work I do is a means of interpreting unsettling truths, of bearing witness, and of sounding an alarm. The beauty of formal representation both carries an affirmation of life and subversively brings us face to face with news from our besieged world.