Top 42 Cinematographers Quotes & Sayings

That excites me, working with really excellent people, be it wonderful directors or actors or cinematographers and especially writers. My work life is going to a set and having these great experiences and coming home shifted by them.

I think what inspires me is in a constant state of flux...it's easier to stick to photographers and perhaps cinematographers, though the great medieval, Mannerist, and Baroque painters of Italian, Spanish, Flemish, and German origin are a constant source of inspiration, along with select modernists like Dali.

I'm grateful to have been acting for as long as I have because I have so many experiences and memories, and I've gotten to learn from some of the greatest actors, directors, writers and cinematographers. I feel like my career has been a privilege. I can't imagine my life without it.

I've worked with some of the great cinematographers. So I'm always watching what they do and I'm watching how the director composes his shots, just because I find it interesting as an actor; you're trying to help them out as well.

There are, of course, many, many, many good cinematographers and unfortunately they don't work as much as many of those people who do those crazy, stupid movies.

I think you can make a gorgeous movie on any piece of equipment. Look at 'Tangerine,' which is a beautiful movie shot on an iPhone. You see so many movies that are impeccably shot but are vapid, and there's no audience for that except for other cinematographers who just like to watch two-hour-long music videos.

There are artists or filmmakers or cinematographers who have had long careers who, maybe to reinvent themselves or just to stay in a secure place, layer it on or ham it up, if I can use that expression, or make grand choices that don't feel as authentic as what they did to make us fall in love with them in the first place.

The movies I did before were movies with a lot of characters, a lot of locations, and low budgets, which meant that I was running all over the place and never had the chance to build a relationship with an actor. I was always having big, strong relationships with the cinematographers or editors or production designers, but not with the actors.

The visualization of my films is always very important to me and I work very closely with my cinematographers. I've never had the same cinematographer twice now that I think about it. I don't know why that is. Everyone is always busy. They do three or four films a year. It's vital to me.

A lot of male cinematographers stick a pillow to their stomachs so they have somewhere to rest their elbows while shooting.

Films like 'Bond' fund training schemes for film technicians of the future, and working on films themselves provides a great training ground for budding directors and cinematographers. If there's no money there for films to be made, it's like a house of cards, it all comes tumbling down.

It's turned into a world of amateurs. There are amateur actors making millions of dollars, amateur cinematographers, amateur directors... Jesus, these amateur directors can get deals for anything. Another comic book? Oh, very good.

I was glamorous because of magicians like George Folsey, James Wong Howe, Oliver Marsh, Ray June, and all those other great cinematographers. I trusted those men and the other experts who made us beautiful. The rest of it I didn't give a damn about. I didn't fuss about my clothes, my lighting, or anything else, but, believe me, some of them did.

Most people think of cinematographers as choosing subjects of an epic nature to show off what they do - big, sweeping images of war or pageantry.

What distinguishes Vilmos Zsigmond from other cinematographers is, of course, talent but, more, physical stamina. You just can't be great without it.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

Film schools didn't exist when I was growing up. I learned by working with clever people. Good writers and cinematographers.

I have a profound respect for cinematographers. That is my secret sauce. Like they are everything to me.

I was very fortunate in the '70s to work with the best actors, the best directors, the best cinematographers.

Sexism is real and it persists in film and television. I've seen female directors openly undermined by male cinematographers in front of the entire crew

I try to take B genre movies and treat them as if they're A dramas. Get the cinematographers, get the actors to do an A drama, but it just happens to be about aliens or ghosts or crazy people, or killers, or whatever it is.

In entertainment, the technology began giving us greater choice and easier switching before almost any other area. The studios became much more dependent on the stars, not just star actors and directors but also star technicians, star cinematographers. It's a very important evolution in terms of understanding why people are working the way they're working.

I never look a gift horse in the mouth. And I've been really, really lucky. I'm aware of that. And my career has been given to me by the people I've worked with, no question. The actors, the directors, the cinematographers, the writers, all of whom gave me the opportunity to work in the way that I have and I'm really grateful.

I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense - I want the director to see what I'm trying to do.

To me I just, I'm a geek when it comes to cinematographers . And when it comes to Robert and when it comes to someone like Roger Deakins who shot Prisoners and he shot Jarhead.

I am a lifelong career artist, which itself is a bit of a miracle. It's really challenging to be a career artist. I would say that the argument for grant funding is not only did my movie do some social good - hopefully it opened people's eyes - but you created a working artist. I'm hiring cinematographers, I'm hiring production designers, I'm hiring producers.

I've been lucky to learn by playing all kinds of roles and watching all kinds of really good cinematographers, actors, and directors for many years before people were even aware of me in terms of audience.

We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.

I think all cinematographers, at least most of them, would love to do everything on location because you cannot cheat on location. It's there, it's part of the story usually. You have to deal with the elements. You have the sunshine, you have rain, you have fog - it really makes you work harder to try to match things during the day to make it look like it was shot within five minutes, movie time.

I don't want to step on the DP's toes. That's the first lesson I learned when I started directing with other cinematographers.

After 50 years in the motion picture business, I'm still learning my trade. This recent shoot of 'Mandie and the Secret Tunnel' was a revelation. The two young directors, Joy Chapman and Owen Smith, represent a group of actors, directors, and cinematographers all over the country that never show up in New York or Hollywood.

Very few cinematographers, other than the Europeans, know how to light women like they used to in the old days.

The more tools we have directors and cinematographers will be able to express more and create different worlds and feelings. It's like having more instruments in an orchestra.

It's a really exciting thing to collaborate with production designers, cinematographers and gaffers and costume designers and editors and composers.

Mexican cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and Emilio Fernandez were students of both Sergei Eisenstein and Toland. Their exteriors and lighting were gorgeous. And the films Ingmar Bergman did with Sven Nykvist were exceptional.

I think women have made progress in cinematography, contrary to women directors, who I think have regressed. There are many more women cinematographers than when I started.

Our memories are convenient lies we create, cribbing images from others' experiences. We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.

I'm completely surrounded, not only my father, but also my three brothers, and Sergio, my husband, all four of them work in film. Some are writers, or directors, or cinematographers, all of them. I'm surrounded by men that make films, so much that at some point I felt there was no more room in the family for another filmmaker.For many years I was only working as novelist or writing screenplays for others to direct.

Male crews know that women cinematographers are here to stay, and there will be more of us. If they're professionals, they behave as such.

I think that digital is offering many great possibilities for cinematographers. Particularly in urban cityscapes and low light photography its allowing us to render what we actually see with our eyes; which is interesting.

I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense.

The emotional, physical and aesthetic value of a sound is linked not only to the causal explanation we attribute to it but also to its own qualities of timbre and texture, to its own personal vibration. So just as directors and cinematographers (even those who will never make abstract films) have everything to gain by refining their knowledge of visual materials and textures, we can similarly benefit from disciplined attention to the inherent qualities of sounds.