Famous Quotes & Sayings

Alfred Eisenstaedt

I don’t use an exposure meter. My personal advice is: Spend the money you would put into such an instrument for film. Buy yards of film, miles of it. Buy all the film you can get your hands on. And then experiment with it.That is the only way to be successful in photography. Test, try, experiment, feel your way along. It is the experience, not technique, which counts in camera work first of all. If you get the feel of photography, you can take fifteen pictures while one of your opponents is trying out his exposure meter.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react - click. But first, it's most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

With photography, everything is in the eye and these days I feel young photographers are missing the point a bit. People always ask about cameras but it doesn't matter what camera you have. You can have the most modern camera in the world but if you don't have an eye, the camera is worthless. Young people know more about modern cameras and lighting than I do. When I started out in photography I didn't own an exposure meter - I couldn't , they didn't exist! I had to guess.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Never boss people around. It's more important to click with people than to click the shutter.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

The important thing is not the camera but the eye.

Andy Summers

I admire photographers who can take much more ordinarily subject matter and make it transcend that ordinariness, so that it becomes something else fresh and new. It opens this doorway. I really admire people who can do that with photography.

Andy Summers

The thing about photography is, some people surround themselves with extremely strong subject matter. And unless you're a moron, you're going to get a really strong photograph.

Andy Warhol

All photography is Pop, and all photographers are crazy... they feel guilty since they don't have to do very much - just push a button.

Paul Simon

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy I said 'Be careful his bowtie is really a camera'

Paul Simon

...everything looks worse in black and white.

Bianca Jagger

Photography speaks a universal language that does not need translation, and with an immediacy that the written word lacks. It freezes a moment in time, leaving an indelible image.

Cecil Beaton

You can't teach people photography, they've got to learn how to do it the best way possible for them. They can learn from looking at pictures taken by well-known people, but they don't really get intimate with the medium until they've made a few bad shots!

Carrie Mae Weems

I didnt know photography would take me to the places that it has taken me

Carrie Mae Weems

Photography can still be used to champion activism and change. I believe this, even while standing in the cool winds of postmodernism... Postmodernism looked radical, but it wasn't. As a movement it was profoundly liberal and became a victim of itself. Precisely at this historical moment, when multicultural democracy is the order of the day, photography can be used as a powerful weapon toward instituting political and cultural change. I for one will continue to work toward this end.

Carl Sagan

He sought a way to preserve the past. John Hershel was one of the founders of a new form of time travel.... a means to capture light and memories. He actually coined a word for it... photography. When you think about it, photography is a form of time travel. This man is staring at us from across the centuries, a ghost preserved by light.

Antonia Fraser

The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.

Anton Corbijn

Apart from photography and music videos, I also do graphic design.

Anton Corbijn

The really simple approach to photography is a great balance to making the films.

Anton Corbijn

I don't think I treat my film work as an extension of my photography. There are two different sets of rules there.

Anton Corbijn

My photography is very European. In America, I always get the sense that people are comforted by understanding what they're looking at. Photography's quite clear here [in the U.S.], it's very well-explained. My photography's perhaps not as well-explained.

Anton Corbijn

With photography, you are lucky if you get people to look at your pictures at some point. There's no formal way to show them.

Anton Corbijn

Photography has taken me from isolation.

Anton Corbijn

Photography was the only thing that mattered in my life and I gave it everything.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.

Bill Brandt

I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work. Indeed, I feel the simplest approach can often be most effective. A subject placed squarely in the center of the frame, if attention is not distracted from it by fussy surroundings, has a simple dignity which makes it all the more impressive.

Bill Brandt

But I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work.

Bill Brandt

By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule.

Bill Brandt

If there is any method in the way I take pictures, I believe it lies in this: See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. The subject will reveal itself.

Bill Brandt

I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.

Bill Brandt

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.