Quotes on Photographer

If it looks like art, chances are it's somebody else's art.

I like to look at pictures, all kinds. And all those things you absorb come out subconsciously one way or another. You'll be taking photographs and suddenly know that you have resources from having looked at a lot of them before. There is no way you can avoid this. But this kind of subconscious influence is good, and it certainly can work for one. In fact, the more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.

The only things that distinguish the photographer from everybody else are his pictures: they alone are the basis for our special interest in him. If pictures cannot be understood without knowing details of the artist's private life, then that is a reason for faulting them; major art, by definition, can stand independent of its maker.

Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace.

Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world.

I used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time, until I discovered that I didn't need to. If the thing is true, why there it is.

The word "photography" can be interpreted as "writing with light" or "drawing with light." Some photographers are producing beautiful photographs by drawing with light.. Some other photographers are trying to tell something with their photographs. They are writing with light.

The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

A photographer's main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind.

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

Photography helps people to see.

Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation.

The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph.

Most of the information we now get is through television and is mutilated. Photography offers the opportunity to spend much more time on a topic. It's relatively cheaper medium, and can allow a photographer really to live in another place, show another reality, get closer to the truth.

My photographs at best hold only a small length, but through them I would suggest and criticize and illuminate and try to give compassionate understanding.

Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall.

Retire? Retire from What? Life? I will only retire when I am dead!

I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.