Quotes about photography
photography accomplishment students
I was asked by a student what my most significant accomplishment was at National Geographic, after thirty years, and I said that my career came to an appropriate close, and I still loved photography. Not everybody who spends their career at anything ends up fascinated and involved with it. Sam Abell
photography thinking photographer
I think that it's workshops, honestly, that have kept me keen about photography, and about my photography. My career as a workshop photographer came while I was at the Geographic in the late 70's, and has continued consistently since then.
photography interesting track
This might seem off the track, but an interesting thing to me that others could talk about better than I, but one of the growth areas in photographic education has been the so-called slow photography.
photography thoughtful thinking
The thing with my workshops is, photography is a thoughtful process. In an atmosphere of fast photography, and generally thoughtless, quick, automatic photography, I think that there is an interest in the slowed down, thoughtful approach.
photography curiosity done
I did it once, and National Geographic recruited me. I did it primarily out of curiosity. A lot of legendary photographers had worked on that campaign. Ernst Haas had done the early photography, and I knew him. There's a lore in photography about that campaign, and I was curious.
photography father dark
My father taught me photography. It was his hobby, and we had a small darkroom in the fruit cellar of our basement. It was the kind of makeshift darkroom that was only dark at night.
photography spiritual artist
For spiritual companions I have had the many artists who have relied on nature to help shape their imagination. And their most elaborate equipment was a deep reverence for the world through which they passed. Photographers share something with these artists. We seek only to see and to describe with our own voices, and, though we are seldom heard as soloists, we cannot photograph the world in any other way.
photography simplicity special
As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.
photography energetic editorials
Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.
photography strong thinking
And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.
photography wall ohio
'Woman on the Plaza,' with its distinct horizon, snow-like surfaces, wintry wall, stunning sunlight, sharp shadows, and hurrying figure, would become the most biographical of my photographs - an abstract image of the landscape and life of northern Ohio where I grew up and first practiced photography.
photography mistake mad
A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
photography appeals deny
Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
photography vivid scene
Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.
photography light important
How the visual world appears is important to me. I'm always aware of the light. I'm always aware of what I would call the 'deep composition.' Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it's an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.
photography moving thoughtful
But there is more to a fine photograph than information. We are also seeking to present an image that arouses the curiosity of the viewer or that, best of all, provokes the viewer to think-to ask a question or simply to gaze in thoughtful wonder. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to pick up your own camera again and go to work.
photography mean priorities
My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.
photography art desire
Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.
photography littles matter
It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.
photography photographer best-work
My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.
photography photographer asks
I like photographers-you don't ask questions. Ronald Reagan
photography oil fiction
Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting. Robertson Davies
photography thinking knowing
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
photography unexpected unexpected-things
I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before.
photography people waiting
People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.
photography children sunday
I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It's always little altars.
photography zero goes-on
With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.
photography years two
If I had been born one or two hundred years ago, I might have been a sculptor, but photography is a very quick way to see, to make sculpture.
photography hands sake
I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.
photography wake-up essentials
If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.
photography perfect today
I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.
photography photographer great-photography
The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.
photography looks unions
In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything. Tom Clancy