Best 2475 quotes in «photography quotes» category

I often see the materials of photography as being a type of terrain. Emulsions, liquid developers, silver salts, and fixers interact, and I construct a landscape that I need to first explore in my mind's eye if I am to make it manifest as an artful image in silver.

I often think of my work as visual haiku. It is an attempt to evoke and suggest through as few elements as possible rather than to describe with tremendous detail.

I often wonder if it makes me a less interesting person, because it really is music that I geek out about exclusively. It's just everything to me. Those other things too a much lesser extent - photography, food, people - I geek out about people.

I often say I've spent more time with photography than I have with literature just in terms of hours.

I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heat of the known awaits just around the corner.

I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. Ialso got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.

I open events for museums and I do charity work and photography.

I photographed the entire thing in color because to photograph it in black and white would be to keep it as a tragedy. Because there is a tragic element to photographing, in this case not war, but the collapse. It was just destruction.

I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.

I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor, but I believe they develop my seeing and help later on in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

I photograph from the heart. I adore little babies and I think that shows. My images are really very positive, very simple, and from the heart. Babies speak a universal language.

I prefer to think of photography as a never ending journey with infinite possibilities. I love to return to places to re photograph. Nothing is ever the same. The options are endless.

I profoundly believe in - and teach - the proposition that photography is inherently a fiction-making process. Don't speak to me of the document; I don't really believe in it, particularly now. A picture's not the world, but a new thing.

I realized I didn't want to be a photographer. I gave it up, but I still worked that job in the restaurant and I found myself constantly hanging out in the kitchen.

I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are those whose thinking is almost in every way in accord with everyone else. Expression on this basis has become dull to those who wish to think for themselves.

I really don't have any secrets. I've never met a photographer whose work I respected that had a secret because the secret lies within each and every one of us.

I really enjoy the iPad because you can multi-task: I can watch a movie, read, look at pictures that I shot - because I'm into photography. It serves a lot of purposes for me.

I really learned a lot from collecting clothes because I got to go back into the history of fashion and fashion photography and jewelry. It changed how I felt about fashion and about what I did forever because I used to look a little bit down on myself for it.

I really try to divorce myself from any thought of possible use of this stuff. That's part of the discipline. My only purpose while I'm working is to try to make interesting photographs, and what to do with them is another act - an alter consideration. Certainly while I'm working, I want them to be as useless as possible.

I regard photography and film simply as new technical means which painters must absolutely make use of, just as from time out of mind they have made use of brush, charcoal and color. It is certain, however, that photography and film must become as evocative for the sensibility as pencil, charcoal and brush. (1927)

I rode it once, which was up the driveway in the opening credits of the show. I didn't know how to stop it. I actually nearly killed the director of photography, and I smashed into the sound truck.

I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

I say half jokingly that photography is the most difficult of the arts. It does require a certain arrogance to see and to choose. I feel myself walking on a tightrope instead of on the ground.

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

I shutter to think how many people are underexposed and lacking depth in this field.

I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react - click. But first, it's most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken.

I seem to walk in the world as two people. The normal everyday-me is as preoccupied, unobservant and oblivious to visual clues as I ever was. Then there is the photographer-me, the one who has a camera in hand and a specific project in mind, and then the world suddenly jumps to life with potential pictures, as if a switch had been thrown in my brain and a different person is looking out of the same eyes.

I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography?

Is photography an art? There is no point in trying to find out if it is an art. Art is old-fashioned. We need something else.

Isn't it amazing how photography has advanced without improving.

Is photography art?... The pure definition of the word 'art' alone is too vague today to break one's brain and soul about it. Let us take a little vacation from this word.

I start a lot of photo projects but never seem to. . . .

I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing. Filmmaking seemed to be a good compilation of all these skills in a way that allowed me to tell a story “greater than the sum of its parts.”

I started thinking of digital imaging, not photography, in 1994 as it seemed the most appropriate way to deal with ideas of biotechnology and advertising. My practice is conceptual.

I started photography more or less by accident when I was already 27. I was taken on as an assistant by a photographer who was a friend of a friend and I very quickly understood the potential of expression in photography.

I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.

iStockphoto was revolutionizing the stock photography industry, establishing a whole new business model and democratizing stock art for everyone. It made sense for the industry-leading stock image company to take iStock to the next stage of growth, serving all markets at every price point.

I still think photographers should be lashed out at. They should be put in a cage where you can poke them with a stick for a quarter. But not in a hostile way, just for giggles. They really are on the attack against mankind; it's a disease. They should be helped somewhere. But I'd still like to poke them with a stick.

I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. It is the only photo that influenced me. There is such intensity in this image, such spontaneity, such joie de vivre, such miraculousness, that even today it still bowls me over.

I struggle against photography. I struggle against the fact that it is silent, that it is just a piece of paper on the wall, often presented in a tedious white matt frame.

I suffered first as a child from discrimination, poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.

I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs.

I take more to the subject than to my ideas about it. I am not interested in any idea I have had, the subject is so demanding and so important.

I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost - that is important.

I take pleasure in working with the non-art photographs that reside in public archives, essentially authorless and owned by the world itself, because I find the world of fine art photography to be pretty silly and pretentious.

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.

It always amazes me that just when I think there's nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and as moving and as formally interesting as any other medium.

It cannot be too plainly stated that it is quite unimportant whether photography produces 'art' or not. Its own basic laws, not the opinions of art critics, will provide the only valid measure of its future worth.

I tell a little bit of my life to them, and they tell a little of theirs to me. The picture itself is just the tip of the iceberg.