The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?
Edward WestonRead
People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes the misuse of tools in art, suggesting that just as a sieve is unsuitable for drawing water, a camera is not the appropriate tool for painting.
Edward Weston’s quote highlights the importance of using the right tools for artistic expression. It draws a parallel between inappropriate methods in different contexts—using a sieve for water and a camera for painting—illustrating how true artistic skill requires the correct medium and approach to convey a vision effectively.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of choosing the right method for creative expression, one might quote Edward Weston.
The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.
Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?
Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.
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.
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.
The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer
Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.
In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.
Sometimes I've called writing a disease. If so, I'm glad that it caught me.
I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.
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