It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.
I hate having my photograph taken and I try to keep that in mind when I'm photographing other people. But the best photos that I've taken are the ones when people have forgotten that I'm there. If I'm in a recording studio with a musician, for example, maybe I'm not photographing them in the middle of a take but I can just get that stolen moment of them resting and they glance over to me.
A photograph is a photograph, a picture, an image, an illusion complete within itself, depending neither on words, reproductive processes or anything else for its life, its reason for being.
Photos should focus on your waist up, unless you have amazing legs. Then it's okay to include one or two full-body shots in your gallery. The majority of your photos should be closer up, highlighting your face. Don't stage a smile. Instead, try to laugh just before the shot is taken. Flirty smiles that don't look cheesy also work. Make eye contact with the camera. Aim to take most of your photos outdoors.
Selfies became too big. The selfie photos are not good. Fans ask me for a selfie, and I say, 'Let's just do a photo.' I'm not anti-selfie, but I like a classic photograph.
Perhaps the first photograph ever taken, Niépce's view of the rooftops over Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, was a truly pure photograph. The second one he took, he was already comparing nature to the first photograph he had taken.
We're not going the photography route. I think there is a real distinction between photos and images, and Flickr is for photos, and Instagram is for photos. You wouldn't put a filter on a meme; you'd put a filter on top of a photo that came from your camera.
One of the magical things about photography is the transformation that takes place when you photograph something. Something that inherently has very little going for it in terms of the interest you take in it, can become infinitely more interesting when rendered as a photograph. It's no longer a building. It's a photograph.
I don't have a favorite photo. As a photographer, I have attachments to each image. Not the one photo: the experience of getting the photos is the challenge or the thing.
The word 'Playboy' alone doesn't exactly give most women a warm, fuzzy feeling, yet many of the Playboy photos end up in the most praised photo and art magazines and in critically acclaimed photo exhibitions.
Google Photos is great. I enjoy using it to curate my photo collection online. The integration on iOS to Apple Photos is a bit too much voodoo for me.
My style is in the 21st century. If you look at the process, it goes from photography through Photoshop, where certain features are heightened, elements of the photo are diminished. There is no sense of truth when you're looking at the painting or the photo or that moment when the photo was first taken.
I know people have tattooed my 'Sons of Anarchy' photos, they've painted them, on their bikes. I've seen a few of those, sent to me through friends, where they've actually taken my 8x10 Tig photo and put it right on their bike.
The next night he asked Jonah if he could take $9.49 out of Jonah's secret stash that only Danny and his mum and Jack knew about. Jonah kept it in his sock drawer next to a photograph of Jonah and a girl with sad eyes, taken in one of those railway station photo booths.
I think the best war photos I have taken have always been made when a battle was actually taking place - when people were confused and scared and courageous and stupid and showed all these things. When you look at people right at the very moment of truth, everything is quite human. You take a picture at this moment with all the mistakes in it, with everything that might be confusing to the reader, but that's the right combat photo.
I do not photograph for ulterior purposes. I photograph for the thing itself - for the photograph - without consideration of how it may be used.