Famous Quotes & Sayings

Edward Weston

If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

Edward Weston

Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.

Edward Burtynsky

Digital photography and Photoshop have made it very easy for people to take pictures. It's a medium that allows a lot of mediocre stuff to get through.

Edward Burtynsky

I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.

Jonathan Lethem

A reader, encountering a sentence about a barking dog, would have to dwell on why that choice was made at that moment. Everything in a novel is explicitly chosen, whereas some of what a film captures feels incidental, according to the vagaries of photography and sound recording.

Jon Snow

I don't know whether we think in moving images or whether we think in still images. I have a suspicion that on our hard drive, our series within our brains, [exist] still photographs of very important moments in our lives. ... That we think in terms of still images and that what the photography is doing is making direct contact with the human hard drive and recording for all time a sense of what happened.

I never thought I would become a photographer.

On digital photography: It's fantastic, but it's not a freebie for anything. You still have to have this (he points to his eyes), and this (points to his heart), and feet.

To some extent, the cult surrounding black-and-white photography is based on nostalgia.

Tipper Gore

As an avid photographer, I also took advantage of the latest technology in photography - digital photography - to post photos on my website on a daily basis.

Ruth Bernhard

Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe.

Ruth Bernhard

Photography is art when it's used by an artist.

Ruth Bernhard

Never ever say the word shoot when you are taking a picture with a camera because a camera is not a violent weapon.

Ruth Bernhard

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity. To indicate the ideal proportion, to reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal.

Ruth Bernhard

What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality.

Ruth Bernhard

I expect photographs to find me. I never thought of looking for them. I instinctively put them there. My intellect had nothing to do with it.

Ruth Bernhard

You have to follow your instinct all the time. Otherwise you don't make it.

Ruth Bernhard

Every day I am aware of the flow and constant change; perhaps I am at the edge of discovering what more our bodies might be able to teach about the spirit of life. At least, I am always exploring and trying to understand our relationship to the whole universe.

Ruth Bernhard

For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.

Ruth Bernhard

If you can't make the image bigger or more important than what you see, then don't push the button

Ruth Bernhard

Woman has been the target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman, has been my mission.

Ruth Bernhard

Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush. It is as vital as the model herself. Profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. Light I acknowledge as the energy upon which all life on this planet depends.

Ruth Bernhard

There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.

Ruth Bernhard

A person cannot learn to be a photographer. He can only cultivate what he already has. I try to make people aware that they have something very precious to cultivate.

Ruth Bernhard

If youre not interested in life, then photography has no meaning

Ruth Bernhard

Fall in love. Every day. With everything. With life. If you can fall in love, you can be a photographer. I think that is absolutely essential.

Ruth Bernhard

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

Ruth Bernhard

If you are not passionately devoted to an idea, you can make very pleasant pictures but they won't make you cry.

Rudolf Arnheim

The ambition of instantaneous photography... was that of preserving the spontaneity of action and avoiding any indication that the presence of the picture taker had a modifying influence on what was going on.

Ray Harryhausen

I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school.

Ray Harryhausen

There’s a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in King Kong, that adds to the fantasy. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.

Robert Mapplethorpe

I think that it was a great advantage to go into photography not knowing much about it. Not thinking. I think one of the problems with many photographers today is that they never see for themselves, but just like everybody else...

Robert Mapplethorpe

I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before.