Famous Quotes & Sayings

Edward Weston

To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

Edward Weston

I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.

Edward Weston

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

Edward Weston

There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.

Edward Weston

The... arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. ...I say that chance enters into all branches of art: a chance word or phrase starts a new trend of thought in a writer, a chance sound may bring a new melody to a musician, a chance combination of lines, new composition to a painter. ...Chance - which in reality is not chance - but being ready, attuned to one's surroundings - and grasp my opportunity....

Edward Weston

Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed.

Edward Weston

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

Edward Weston

...the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.

Edward Weston

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

Edward Weston

Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.

Edward Weston

The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.

Edward Weston

Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.

Edward Weston

Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.

Edward Weston

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

Edward Weston

For photography is a way to capture the moment - not just any moment, but the important one, this one moment out of all time when your subject is revealed to the fullest - that moment of perfection which comes once and is not repeated.

Edward Weston

Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.

Edward Weston

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

Edward Weston

The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

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.

Henry Van Dyke

Favorite People, Favorite Places, Favorite Memories of the past ... These are the joys of a lifetime Those are the things that last

John Dykstra

I had done a lot of rock 'n' roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock 'n' roll bands.

John Dykstra

George Lucas wanted this moving camera for all of the photography in Star Wars. He was willing to take a risk with the concepts that I advanced with regard to ways for doing that.

John Berger

Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.

John Berger

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.

John Berger

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

John Berger

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

John Berger

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

James Nachtwey

I want my pictures to cut through political abstractions... and make a connection on a human level.

James Nachtwey

Photography can be perceived as the opposite of war.

James Nachtwey

I began after college, about 1972. I began to teach myself photography. I went to work for a local newspaper for four years as a kind of basic training.