The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the importance of respecting one's tools and the lessons learned through experiences.
Annie Leibovitz emphasizes the dual lessons learned from her experience of climbing Mt. Fuji with her first camera: the determination required to undertake such a challenge, and the moderation needed in handling one's tools. This experience not only highlights her growth as a photographer but also underscores the necessity of understanding and respecting the equipment that enables artistic expression.
In practice
During a photography workshop, I shared this quote to inspire students to value their equipment.
Those who want to be serious photographers, you're really going to have to edit your work. You're going to have to understand what you're doing. You're going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do.
I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.
I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.
In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments.
My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.
I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is.
As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.
This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It's, on its best day, is a crude art. We make mistakes; I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist, I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories, make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.
Training readers to expect a voice or subject matter from me would interfere with the reinvention I crave. At the same time, I feel almost too able to disappear at times.
I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.
The reality of a poem is a very ghostly one. It suggests, it suggests, it suggests again.
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