Best 2475 quotes in «photography quotes» category

I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious.

I come from a visual background. I used to work in the camera department at Warner Bros. when I was a teenager. I grew up dusting lenses and learning about photography.

I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.

I could never figure out why photography and art had separate histories. So I decided to explore both.

I consider myself fortunate that photography exists, because otherwise I'd be stuck in the tragedy of ephemeralness that can come with installation art.

I could feel myself changing physically. It was like something dropped out of the sky. Seeing her on the fire escape had given me a certain feeling, and then when I saw the photograph of her, it gave me a similar feeling. And I thought that was an incredibly powerful thing - that a photograph could give you a feeling that was similar to a feeling you had in the physical world. Nobody could've told me that. I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

Ideally I would like the work to be a hybrid between painting and photography.

Ideas and thoughts collide and sort themselves out in these fruitful collisions.

I could ramble on forever, I just love photography. It's my passion, it drives my family crazy. I live it and breathe it.

I did all the stuff that people do - film, performance, photography, pictures and words, words and pictures. In retrospect, I was trying to find some way to put things - meaning images and forms - together that highlighted some idea of what was underneath the surface of an image, what determined how something was seen.

I did it once, and National Geographic recruited me. I did it primarily out of curiosity. A lot of legendary photographers had worked on that campaign. Ernst Haas had done the early photography, and I knew him. There's a lore in photography about that campaign, and I was curious.

Ideas and art are the possibility of an answer tomorrow.

I didn't intend to work on the issue of child marriage, but I felt like it was a topic that is related to a lot of the other issues, like acid attacks, self-immolation, and female genital mutilation. I wanted to continue to drive the conversation, but my overall goal is to protect girls. Photography has a way of addressing the viewer whether they want to deal with it or not, and that's why photography is such a good medium for documenting the issues that girls face.

I didn't choose photography. Photography chose me.

I didn't do well in high school, but I took photography, and I loved being able to capture moments. It led to more and more photography, and fashion was the angle into photography for me. It was incredible to see photographs by Irving Penn or Helmut Newton. I was really intrigued by that, and that's what led me to New York City.

I didn't want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature.

I didnt know photography would take me to the places that it has taken me

I didn't want to be criticized for taking low-quality photographs, so I tried to reach the best, highest quality of photography and then to combine this with a conceptual art practice. But thinking back, that was the wrong decision [laughs]. Developing a low-quality aesthetic is a sign of serious fine art-I still see this.

I didn't do so well in the academic world, so I think the only way I could express myself was through visual art - anything I could get my hands on, whether it was glassblowing, sculpture, painting, or photography. I always wanted to be a painter. Or a farmer.

I didn't do well in high school, but I took photography, and I loved being able to capture moments.

I discovered that close to half the planet is 'pristine.' We live in towns such as London, Paris or Sao Paulo and have the impression that all the pristine areas are gone, but they are not.

I discovered about 150 dots is the minimum number of dots to make a specific recognizable person. You can make something that looks like a head, with fewer dots, but you won't be able to give much information about who it is.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.

I do have strong convictions and political opinions, but I don't think it's necessary to imbue my photographic work with them. I use photography as a vessel for visual material to flow through, to encourage conversation with the viewer. I try to present a catalyst and invite viewers to tell their own stories.

I do note that photography, a despised medium to work in, is full of empty phonies and worthless commercial people. That presents quite a challenge to the man who can take delight in being in a very difficult, disdained medium.

I discovered that this camera was the technical means in photography of communicating what the world looks like in a state of heightened awareness. And it's that awareness of really looking at the everyday world with clear and focused attention that I'm interested in.

I'd like my coffin to be a camera obscura so I can see what's going on outside.

I don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality. It's only reality as we experience it.

I don't even like photography at all. I'm just doing photography until I can do something better.

I don't get wrapped up in technique and the like.

I discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings. For the first time, I looked through a lens - and photography immediately started to invade my life.

I do not photograph for ulterior purposes. I photograph for the thing itself - for the photograph - without consideration of how it may be used.

I do not object to retouching, dodging or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique.

I do not want [photography] explained to me in terms of... formulas, learned, but so hopelessly unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on a pin and put in a glass case. I want to see the sunlight on its wings as it flits from flower to flower and I don't care a rap what its Latin name may be.

I don't care about traditional photography. I want more control.

I don't care how you photograph - use the kitchen mop if you must, but if the product is not true to the laws of photography... you have produced something that is dead. (1923)

I don't care so much anymore about 'good photography'; I am gathering evidence for history.

I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.

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

I don't know that there were any rules for documentary photography. As a matter of fact, I don't think the term was even very precise. So as far as I'm concerned, the kind of photography I did in the FSA was the kind of photography I still do today, because it is based on passionate concern for the human condition. That is the basis of all the work that I do.

I don't know who said 'pictures don't lie.' It couldn't have been a photographer.

I don't like explosions. I don't mind progress. But digital photography has made every man, woman, child and chimpanzee a photographer of sorts and consequently has numbed down the general quality of photographs.

I don't just look at the thing itself or at the reality itself; I look around the edges for those little askew moments-kind of like what makes up our lives-those slightly awkward, lovely moments.

I don't like captions. I prefer people to look at my pictures and invent their own stories.

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 don't really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.

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.

I don't have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It's not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn't do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough.

I don't speak emotionally about my pictures. That's for other people to do. I will say that I love my photographs. That's what keeps me going.

I don't see light as something that falls, but as a positive force.