Top 25 Quotes & Sayings by Joe McNally

Digital technology has thrown a closed shop wide open, and there are more people out there snapping away than ever before. Some of the pictures are bad, some of them are good, and many of them need some seasoning and direction.

Photography used to be not for the faint of heart. Its rigors would weed out the not-so-committed pretty quickly. You had to crank the f-stop ring yourself!

I've been a big fan always of getting my camera in different places and trying to seek the unusual vantage point.

Technology has eliminated the basement darkroom and the whole notion of photography as an intense labor of love for obsessives and replaced them with a sense of immediacy and instant gratification.

Ansel Adams rattled around the Southwest with his battered truck and his view camera, which looked like a giant accordion with a lens attached to it.

Do not be afraid of mistakes. They will be with you always,every time you put a camera to your eye. [If you] shoot safe, and don't at least occasionally court disaster, you are not trying. Time to hang up the camera.

When shooting a story about someone, their hands should always be on your list to shoot.

If you're not having fun, your pictures will reflect that.

Always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It's the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.

John Loengard, the picture editor at Life, always used to tell me, ”If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.

If you view your life as a piece of fabric or a tapestry, the photography is the stitching. It keeps everything together.

Seems Google management figured out it is cheaper, happier and more productive to take care of their employees and create a positive work environment than to burn them to a crisp, make them afraid of the future, and send them off into the highways and byways of California in search of a Taco Bell for lunch.

A professor I had in college used to tell me that if someone won’t listen to what you have to say because you’re not wearing a tie, then put on a tie, ’cause what you have to say is more important than not wearing a tie. He was right.

The camera’s not a camera, really. It’s an open door we need to walk through. It’s up to us to keep moving our feet.

Seán Manchester is, unsurprisingly, very well read in both classical and more recent sources on vampires and vampirism, and cites them with great authority while taking the reader through a brief tour of vampire lore and mythology. This is a book I'd recommend to anybody with an interest in the author or vampires. The parts which deal with vampires are obviously based on years of substantial research and personal experience.

We make pictures. At the end of the day, we create something potentially significant that did not exist at the beginning of the day. We go forward, despite the uncertainty. Because this is an act of love and passion, which defies reason and prudence.

Unpredictability. Accidents. Not good when you’re engaging in, say, brain surgery, but when lighting...wonderful!

I can't tell you how many pictures I've missed just 'cause I've been so hell bent on getting the shot I think I want.

The most important piece of equipment in your bag is your attitude

Our pictures are our footprints. It’s the best way to tell people we were here.

No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It's the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.

A career in photography is a journey without a destination.

Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.

To me, pictures are about memory.

You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles.