Top 116 Quotes & Sayings by Annie Leibovitz - Page 2

I love photography. And I just eat it up. I feel like I'm an encyclopedia, you know, inside.

I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.

One of the great things about being an older person is that I am very aware of the scope of the work and the historical sense of it. It's bigger than me.

What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.

What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.

There certainly are people who are a pain to work with. I'd be crazy to name them. You can't be indiscreet in this business.

I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.

My father was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, which had a hospital where they brought casualties straight from the battlefield. My mother was kind of a sophisticated bohemian, and my father was in the military to make a living.

Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't true. What became important was to have a point of view.

I'd like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.

I can't stand the word 'celebrity.' It's such a brash word.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.

What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

I went to Yosemite as an homage to Ansel Adams. I could never be Ansel Adams, but to know that's there for us - there's so much for us in this country.

I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'

I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.

I try to be home for dinner, but I'm not there enough. I sometimes feel I'm still fumbling, getting it wrong, but I make my way.

As fantastic as it is to have 'Vogue' and 'Vanity Fair' as places to work, I don't often get to shoot the kind of things I like to photograph in the way I like to photograph.

A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments.

I love having the photograph in my hand. I love looking at the photograph. I love looking at a box of photographs. I just love the still photograph.

As a young person, and I know it’s hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn’t do normally if I was just by myself.

A photograph is just a little, teeny-weeny, small piece of life. I feel like I see so much more than what I can actually get.

Most people, especially successful people, are hard-working. They want to participate. They want to do things well.

One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time.

The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can't.

I think self-portraits are very difficult. I’ve always seen mine as straightforward, very stripped down, hair pulled back. No shirt. Whatever light happened to be available. I’d want it to be very graphic – about darkness and light. No one else should be there, but I’m scared to do it by myself. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The whole idea of a self-portrait is strange. I’m so strongly linked to how I see through the camera that to get to the other side of it would be difficult. It would be as if I were taking a photograph in the dark.

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t. It’s important to stay the course. I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I’d listened to anyone. You have to listen somewhat and then put that to the side and know that what you do matters.

I'm pretty used to people not liking having their picture taken. I mean, if you do like to have your picture taken, I worry about you.

Things happen in front of you. That's perhaps the most wonderful and mysterious aspect of photography.

Photography's like this baby that needs to be fed all the time. It's always hungry.

I was out there with the White House press squad, and after his helicopter took off, and the carpet rolled up...This wasn't a photograph that others were taking, but I continued to take pictures.

All dancers are, by and large, a photographer's dream. They communicate with their bodies and they are trained to be completely responsive to a collaborative situation.

When you involve people, they come out, you see them, you get to see their sense of humor.

I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

The subjects felt more comfortable if they played the role than if they had to be themselves.

...I gave up on being a journalist - I thought having a point of view was more important than being objective.

When I'm asked about my work, I try to explain that there is no mystery involved. It is work. But things happen all the time that are unexpected, uncontrolled, unexplainable, even magical. The work prepares you for that moment. Suddenly the clouds roll in and the soft light you longed for appears.

As you get older, you have different tools, and you learn to use photography differently.

I don't try to overintellectua lize my concepts of people. In fact, the ideas I have, if you talk about them, they seem extremely corny and it's only in their execution that people can enjoy them...It's something I've learned to trust: The stupider it is, the better it looks.

There's an idea that it's hard to be a woman artist. People assume that women have fewer opportunities, less power. But it's not any harder to be a woman artist than to be a male artist. We all take what we are given and use the parts of ourselves that feed the work. We make our way. Photographers, men and women, are particularly lucky. Photography lets you find yourself. It is a passport to people and places and to possibilities.

When I was younger, I did things with a camera I would not do by myself. I remember going down to the docks in San Francisco and asking a fisherman if he would take me out on his boat. I would never do that without a camera.

Everyone has a point of view. Some people call it style, but what we're really talking about is the guts of a photograph. When you trust your point of view, that's when you start taking pictures.

I've always cared more about taking pictures than about the art market.

When I started to be published I thought about Margaret Bourke-White and the whole journalistic approach to things. I believed I was supposed to catch life going by me - that I wasn't to alter it or tamper with it - that I was just to watch what was going on and report it as best I could. This shoot with John was different. I got involved, and I realized that you can't help but be touched by what goes on in front of you. I no longer believe that there is such a thing as objectivity.

Photography is not something you retire from.

My early childhood equipped me really well for my portrait work: The quick encounter, where you are not going to know the subject for very long. These days I am much more comfortable with the fifteen minute relationship, than I am with a life long relationship.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. It takes you to a place within yourself.

A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that.

In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image. Every time there is some terrible or great moment, we remember the stills.

I’d like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.

There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that's the real person. But I'm interested in whatever is going on. And I'm not that comfortable myself.

I’ve said about a million times that the best thing a young photographer can do is to stay close to home. Start with your friends and family, the people who will put up with you. Discover what it means to be close to your work, to be intimate with a subject. Measure the difference between that and working with someone you don't know as much about. Of course there are many good photographs that have nothing to do with staying close to home, and I guess what I'm really saying is that you should take pictures of something that has meaning for you

Irving Penn said he didn't want to photograph anyone under 60, and I think there is some truth about it.

People buy ideas, they don't buy photographs.