Famous Quotes & Sayings

Elliott Erwitt

Photography is an art of observation - it's about creating something extraordinary out of the ordinary. You choose a frame and then wait until the right time for something magical to come along and fill it.

Elliott Erwitt

Good photography is not about Zone Printing or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It's just about seeing. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Nothing more.

Elliott Erwitt

I like to think I keep my mind open. When I walk the streets I don't look for anything in particular. I come from a philosophy that believes you shouldn't have preconceived notions - that you don't need a gimmick. That you should just photograph what you react to - what you see.

Elliott Erwitt

Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times...I just shoot at what interests me at that moment.

Elliott Erwitt

Most photographers work best alone, myself included.

Elliott Erwitt

All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice.

Elliott Erwitt

I like things that have to do with what is real, elegant, well presented and without excessive style. In other words, just fine observation.

Joel Sternfeld

Photography has always been capable of manipulation.

Joel Sternfeld

Even the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged.

Joel Sternfeld

Photography has always been capable of manipulation. Even more subtle and more invidious is the fact that any time you put a frame to the world, it's an interpretation. I could get my camera and point it at two people and not point it at the homeless third person to the right of the frame, or not include the murder that's going on to the left of the frame. You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo. There's an infinite number of ways you can do this: photographs have always been authored.

Joel Sternfeld

No individual photo explains anything. That's what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer's job to get this medium to say what you need it to say. Because photography has a certain verisimilitude, it has gained a currency as truthful - but photographs have always been convincing lies.

John Cassavetes

Art films aren't necessarily photography. It's feeling. If we can capture a feeling of a people, of a way of life, then we made a good picture.

Lisa Jones

Photography is one big scrapbook of your life.

Lisa Jones

Photography is like an open book to the world.

Lawrence Schiller

I never considered myself a good photographer. I still don't. I thought of myself as a hard worker. My camera was a sponge and I had an instinct that athletes have - anticipation. Photography really represents an enormous amount of anticipation - understanding what might be there the next moment and being prepared for it.

Lauren Greenfield

All my film ideas and subjects have come from photography.

Lauren Greenfield

My photography is often a sociological look at American culture, and it's been very well published in the U.K.

Lauren Greenfield

When I first moved from photography to filmmaking, I was worried about how big I had to become. I was one person, or maybe me and an assistant, and I had these small cameras, and maybe a flash.

Lewis Hine

While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.

Lewis Hine

Photography is an empathy towards the world.

Lewis Hine

I wanted to show the thing that had to be corrected: I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated.

Lewis Hine

Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance.

Lewis Carroll

The recent extraordinary discovery in Photography, as applied in the operations of the mind, has reduced the art of novel-writing to the merest mechanical labour.

Lewis Carroll

Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.

Minor White

We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room.

Minor White

Different levels of photography require different levels of understanding and skill. A "press the button, let George do the rest" photographer needs little or no technical knowledge of photography. A zone system photographer takes more responsibility. He visualizes before he presses the button, and afterwards calibrates for predictable print values.

Minor White

Some of the young photographers today enter photography where I leave off. My "grandchildren" astound me. What I worked for they seem to be born with. So I wonder where Their affirmations of Spirit will lead. My wish for them is that their unfolding proceeds to fullness of Spirit, however astonishing or anguished their lives.

Minor White

Students were taught by doing.

Minor White

Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera.

Minor White

Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts.

Minor White

We could teach photography as a way to make a living, and best of all, somehow to get students to experience for themselves photography as a way of life.

Minor White

Reaching a 'creative' state of mind thru positive action is considered preferable to waiting for 'inspiration'.

Minor White

The photographer projects himself into everything he sees, identifying himself with everything in order to know it and to feel it better.