The best camera is the one you have with you.
Interpretation
You should make the most of the tools you have at your disposal, rather than waiting for the perfect ones.
This quote emphasizes the importance of utilizing the resources and tools available to you at any given moment. Instead of waiting for the ideal situation or equipment, it encourages creativity and innovation with what you currently possess, suggesting that the act of creation is more important than perfection or ideal conditions.
In practice
A photographer giving a talk on adaptability in their craft may reference this quote.
You find that you have to do many things, more than just lift up the camera and shoot, and so you get involved in it in a very physical way. You may find that the picture you want to do can only be made from a certain place, and you're not there, so you have to physically go there. And that participation may spur you on to work harder on the thing, . . . because in the physical change of position you start seeing a whole different relationship.
The drama of light exists not only in what is in the light, but also in what is left dark. If the light is everywhere, the drama is gone.
If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.
...And, all at once, the moon arouse through the thin ghastly mist, And was crimson in color... And they lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom. And lay down at the feet of the demon. And looked at him steadily in the face.
I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.
People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.
Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.
When asked how she knows when her writing is where she wants it to be: "I know when it's the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it's the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that."
There are so many factors when you think of your own films. You think of the people you worked on it with, and somehow forget the movie. You can't forgive the movie for a long time. It takes a few years to look at it with any objectivity and forgive its flaws.
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