Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Photographers - Page 14

I'm still learning and I'm still growing as a photographer.

I have always felt that my work is religious, not sacrilegious.

I always say I make pictures rather than take pictures.

I have always found photography magical, and became more taken with it whilst modeling.

How do you find a way to say what an extraordinary experience it is to be alive in this world? That is the kind of subject matter I try to work with.

If I create anything, I create the atmosphere of trust and openness.

Something new always slowly changes right in front of your eyes - it just happens.

Photographs speak to me, and I obey.

Photojournalism is neither photography or journalism. It has its function but it's not where I see myself: the press is for me just a means for photographing, for material – not for telling the truth.

What patients want is not rocket science, which is really unfortunate because if it were rocket science, we would be doing it. We are great at rocket science. We love rocket science. What we’re not good at are the things that are so simple and basic that we overlook them.

I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects.

If we want TRULY EXTRAORDINARY VISION then you have to continually expand your horizons, take risks. If we don’t push our edge we’ll never expand our view.. It’s not trespassing to go beyond your own boundaries.

Since 1970, I've been using text and ephemera as well as photographs in order to tell stories of one kind or another. There's a thread that runs through all the work that is to do with bearing witness. The photographs are about asking questions, though, not answering them.

I think if the Vatican is smart, someday they'll collect my work.

I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something - a great success. I'm very proud of it.

One of the nice things about living in Silicon Valley is that I end up at all these conferences and things, and I get to listen in on the zeitgeist.

The picture is like a prayer, an offering, and hopefully an opening through which to seek what we don't know, or already know and should take seriously.

Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me.

I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. Along the way, however, the camera also caught evidence against hope, and I eventually concluded that this, too, belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and thus useful.

People who look at Greek statues never say it's a shame because they're not complete.

I wanted to show the thing that had to be corrected: I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated.

The photographer who attempts to fit happily into the world by using the traditional perspective of the camera will end up falling into the hole of the "idea" he has dug for himself.

Always carry a camera, it's tough to shoot a picture without one.

I like what Wallace Stevens said: "Poetry must almost successfully resist intelligence." I just change the word "poetry" to "my photographs".

I have never taken a picture for any other reason than that at that moment it made me happy to do so.

Photography came as a substitute. I was painfully shy and found talking to people difficult; a camera in hand gave me a function, a reason to be somewhere, a witness, but not an actor.

When I first toured with Wings things that were said about me were true - I did sing out of tune.

How should we judge what we see? More intimately, let us consider the vulnerability of the human body and soul under these circumstances. It’s all creation. It’s made. It’s not a given.

I only tie up woman's body because I know I cannot tie up her heart. Only her physical parts can be tied up. Tying up a woman becomes an embrace.

My allegiance was always to the act. I wanted them to be happy. I wasn't owned by a magazine or a record label. And I was a very naughty boy to boot!

I've been diving for about 30 years, and I can honestly say that I've had some amazing encounters with sharks, squids, and other whales. But the encounter with the right whales in the Auckland Islands was probably the best thing I've ever done. It was just that amazing.

Everyone in a band has a big ego - they love having pictures taken.

I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.

I don't like captions. I prefer people to look at my pictures and invent their own stories.

People think the camera steals their soul. Places, I am convinced, are affected in the opposite direction. The more they are photographed (or drawn and painted) the more soul they seem to accumulate.

Men are separated by so many petty things.

Working improvisationally in my studio with dancers, it's completely different. We don't have any starting point; we don't have an end point. We don't have anything we are trying to show or do. The picture evolves from nowhere.

I will refine somebody in a minor way, but I don't want to totally change them. I don't want them to look like plastic dolls.

Less information often leads to more interpretation.

The skull is nature's sculpture.

I very strongly believe that if you go back to your roots, if you mine that inner territory, you can bring out something that is indelibly you and authentic - like your thumbprint. It's going to have your style because there is no one like you.

The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the sense of beauty, a beauty that penetrates you.

It's not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian.

I think that emotional content is an image's most important element, regardless of the photographic technique. Much of the work I see these days lacks the emotional impact to draw a reaction from viewers, or remain in their hearts.

Everybody's version of style is totally different and that's what I think keeps me going out on the street everyday is going out and kind of seeing the variations and what things maybe I'd never seen quite that way that I find very curious and how people will be able to communicate their own persona through their clothing, their posture, the way they wear their hair. I think all those elements end up becoming very interesting because I don't think I'm really particularly a people person. So for me I think it's interesting to kind of be able to read people in that way.

If photographers are responsible for creating or reflecting an image of women in society, then, I must say, there is only one way for the future, and this is to define women as strong and independent. This should be the responsibility of photographers today: to free women, and finally everyone, from the terror of youth and perfection.

I had in mind a long career.

Adolescence is interesting. I mean, all of life is interesting and all of life is transitionary. But I think there is an exponential growth physically, intellectually, emotionally and there is so much potential.

[When] I am taking a photograph, I am conscious that I am constructing images rather than taking snapshots. Since I do not take rapid photographs it is in this respect like a painting which takes a long time where you are very aware of what you are doing in the process. Exposure is only the final act of making the image as a photograph.

I first worked on sports photography, and it was until 2002, when I was already 32 years old, that I really started working and enjoying Africa's wildlife.

I don't see men or women as my sexual objects. I keep myself out of that equation.

A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, the Testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

The most important thing is to go out and see the stars, not to see them in books.

The thing is that pictures are everywhere. The question is what we don't see, and why don't we see so much. I just see it.

I guess my work is described a lot of the time as very sensual and sexy. When I take a picture, I'm very focused on trying to discover something about a person. Or about an idea. I try to be quite successful at it.

My works look to how images are produced, but specially based upon how the material reacts.

...it is pretentious for photographers to believe that their pictures alone change things. If they did, we wouldn't be besieged by war, by incidents of genocide, by hunger. A more realistic assessment of photography's value is to point out that it is illustrative of what's going on, that it provides a record of history, that photographs can prompt dialogue.

I don’t create art to get high dollar projects, I do high dollar projects so I can create more art.

No one can do inspired work without genuine interest in his subject and understanding of its characteristics.