Famous Quotes & Sayings

Galen Rowell

I began to realize that the camera sees the world differently than the human eye and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed.

Galen Rowell

At the heart of all photography is an urge to express our deepest personal feelings - to reveal our inner, hidden selves, to unlock the artist. Those of us who become photographers are never satisfied with just looking at someone else's expression of something that is dear to us. We must produce our own images, instead of buying postcards and photo books. We seek to make our own statements of individuality.

Franz Kafka

Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.

Erica Jong

The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.

Eric Clapton

And I don't like having my picture taken. I'm almost like an old African in that sense. I think it steals a bit of the soul.

Hanneli Mustaparta

I have always found photography magical, and became more taken with it whilst modeling.

Greg Gorman

For me a photograph is most successful when it doesn't answer all the questions and it leaves something to be desired.

Graeme Le Saux

What it all boils down to for me is having the enthusiasm to do something for enjoyment and being stimulated by what's around you. That's what photography does for me.

Graeme Le Saux

When you live by the sea, there are definite seasons when you can see the weather coming and going, which lends itself to photography.

Graeme Le Saux

My wife Mariana is a good photographer too and, like me, she just picks up a camera and takes a picture when she sees something, rather than looking too deeply into it.

Graeme Le Saux

The problem for me is that I've never actually studied photography, so it's quite a steep learning curve. Cameras these days do so much for you automatically but I still think there's a point where you should actually know the technical side.

Harry Callahan

I like the simple things. I don't know why. I'm that way. I came from a simple place.

Harry Callahan

The mystery isn't in the technique, it's in each of us.

Harry Callahan

I can tell you for me it goes on forever. There are some things you can't ever find out. You can't find out in one life either.

Harry Callahan

I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious.

Harry Callahan

A picture is like a prayer.

Harry Callahan

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

Harry Callahan

A picture is like a prayer; you're offering a prayer to get something, and in a sense it's like a gift of God because you have practically no control-at least I don't.

Harry Callahan

I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor, but I believe they develop my seeing and help later on in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

Harry Callahan

I think I came alive when I started photography.

Harry Callahan

You only do exercises in art school. That's not the real thing. A little bit tells you so much. You have to find your own self. And you don't know what you are! But that's what you have to search for.

Harry Callahan

Every time I talked about making a picture I didn't do it. I had already done it - talking about it! I quit talking.

Harry Callahan

In terms of art, the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don't do it, you don't know what might happen.

Harry Callahan

It's the subject matter that counts. I'm interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can't always see.

Harry Callahan

I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are those whose thinking is almost in every way in accord with everyone else. Expression on this basis has become dull to those who wish to think for themselves.

Harry Callahan

Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure.

Harry Callahan

Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.

Harry Callahan

To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures.

Harry Callahan

I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.

Harry Callahan

I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.

Harold Evans

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth.

J. G. Ballard

Nudity in photography, whether involving adults or children, is a subject sinking under a freight of political and moral disapproval it could never hope to support, and this is not the place for me to get out the bilge pump. I will only say that critics who tremble so fiercely at the thought of the voyeuristic male gaze miss the point that distance generates mystery and enchantment, and expresses the awe with which the male imagination regards all women.

Italo Calvino

Photography has a meaning only if it exhausts all possible images.