A Quote by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards - never while actually taking a photograph.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Quote Topics

Actually Afterwards Beforehand Done Never Photograph Should Taking Thinking While

Quote Author

Henri Cartier-Bresson
French - Photographer
August 22, 1908 - August 3, 2004

As I was walking up the stairs to dad's old room, and I was looking at the photographs, I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories. That someone actually took the photograph, and the people in the photograph had just eaten lunch or something.

Stephen Chbosky

When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.

Karen Blixen

The poet should try to give his poem the quiet swiftness of flame, so that the reader will feel and not think while he is reading. But the thinking will come afterwards.

Sara Teasdale

Many cherish the idea that a photograph is an exact presentment of nature, and accept without question the paradox that a photograph cannot lie. Actually there never was a more unmitigated liar.

Walter J. Phillips

A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change.

Pablo Picasso

Dear Procrastinator: Taking action in and of itself is not difficult, but is in fact satisfying and is usually followed by a sense of pride & accomplishment. However, it is THINKING about the action that you should be taking and NOT taking it that's difficult, as it leaves you feeling guilty and unsatisfied. THE SOLUTION: Stop thinking and take action NOW.

Hal Elrod

I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier [actually, it was in an anti-aircraft gun emplacement, not a carrier], which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. [Actually, that was her intention in posing for the photograph the way she did.] It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.

Jane Fonda

Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good

Garry Winogrand

But there are times when thinking is misplaced, like when taking photographs. You cannot think your way to making photographs; you can photograph your way to clearer thinking.

Bill Jay

How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and people with a reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

Duane Michals

It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.

Baltasar Gracian

It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards.

Charles Darwin

If you photograph for a long time, you get to understand such things as body language. I often do not look at people I photograph, especially afterwards. Also when I want a photo, I become somewhat fearless, and this helps a lot. There will always be someone who objects to being photographed, and when this happens you move on.

Martin Parr

[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.

Thomas Struth

It looks as if I was thinking what you were thinking." "Actually, you weren't. I was really thinking I needed to ask you a question." "What was that?" "Do you think we should ask Goatee Guy how to find the caterer?" I smiled at him innocently as his eyebrows pratically met above his nose. "I am never going to share my pet peeves with you again."