Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I see no reason for recording the obvious.
No photographer is better than the simplest of cameras
Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.
The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?
Is love like art - something always ahead, never quite attained.
Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.
I don't care if you make a print on a bath mat, just as long as it is a good print.
This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.
Dare to be irrational! - keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.
A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.
It's hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.
I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.
Photography, not soft gutless painting, is best equipped to bore into the spirit of today.
Art is based on order. The world is full of 'sloppy Bohemians' and their work betrays them.
Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?
My work is never intellectual. I never make a negative unless emotionally moved by my subject.
To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.
If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.
I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.
A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one's own faults without bothering about others.
I find myself every so often looking at my ground glass as though the unrecorded image might escape me!
If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!
Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.
I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.
The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise.
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.
An excellent conception can be quite obscured by faulty technical execution or clarified by faultless technique.
Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.
......so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.
My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.
Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.
People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.
When a photographer masters the tools and processes of the art, then the quality of the work is only limited by his creative vision.
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.
I would say to any artist: Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.
Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.
...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.
For the obvious reason that nature - unadulterated and unimproved by man - is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement.
I always work better when I do not reason, when no question of right or wrong enter in,-when my pulse quickens to the form before me without hesitation nor calculation.
The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.
I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without.
...through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.
When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.
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.
When money enters in - then, for a price, I become a liar - and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.
Restricting too personal, and therefore prejudiced, interpretation leads to revolution - the fusion of an inner and outer reality derived from the wholeness of life - sublimating things seen into things known.
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.