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Photography Quotes

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Photography Quotes

“Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode - from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage - the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected.”

“I have to shoot three cassettes of film a day, even when not 'photographing', in order to keep the eye in practice.”

Eye Film Order Three Practice Photography Photographer Cassettes

Author:Josef Koudelka

“The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. There is something demoralizing about going back to a place to retake pictures. You can no longer see your subjects in a fresh eye; you keep comparing them with the pictures you hold in your memory. [The] world was full of discoveries waiting to be made...(as a photographer) I could share the things I saw and learned...you would react to something all others might walk by.”

“...everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings... To capture some of this - I suppose that's lyricism.”

Light Eye Alive Crazy Objects Photography Photographer Capture Surroundings Variation

Author:Josef Sudek

“At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'.”

Needs Art Stills Enough Light Eye Able Space Creativity Emotional Materials Photography Roots Photographer Details Impulse Make Sense Stance Through The Eyes Intersections Observant

Book:New England Days

Source: New England Days

“I think of myself as a reportage photographer. I like the word. It implies a personal account of an observed event with connotations of subjectivity but honesty. It is eye-witness photography.”

Thinking Eye Events Honesty Photography Accounts Photographer Witness Subjectivity Connotation

Author:David Hurn

“"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?""”

Thinking World Want Feels Looks Doe Dream Eye Moving Asks My Own Subjects Photography Conviction Reactions Statements Print Personal Statement

Author:Ansel Adams

“I often see the materials of photography as being a type of terrain. Emulsions, liquid developers, silver salts, and fixers interact, and I construct a landscape that I need to first explore in my mind's eye if I am to make it manifest as an artful image in silver.”

Ifs Needs Mind Firsts Eye Materials Type Photography Photographer Landscape Silver Manifest Salt Constructs Liquid Developers Terrain Fixers

Book:New England Days

Source: New England Days

“It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures. A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned. To achieve his best work, the young photographer must discover what really excites him visually. He must discover his own world.”

Source: Bill Brandt: Selected Texts & Bibliography

“The camera is not only an extension of the eye but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future. Instead of using the camera only to reproduce objects, I wanted to use it to make what is invisible to the eye - visible.”

Use Light Eye Wanted Past Brain Objects Photography Cameras Invisible Faster Visible Extensions Past Present Past Present And Future

Author:Wynn Bullock

“...There are too many people studying it [photography] now who are never going to make it. You can't give them a formula for making it. You have to have it in you first, you don't learn it. The seeing eye is the important thing.”

People Giving Firsts Important Eye Study Seeing Photography Important Things Formulas

Author:Imogen Cunningham

“Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.”

Life Eye Artist Culture Seeing Photography Phenomenon Physiological

Author:Dorothea Lange

“The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.”

Heart Eye Essentials Photography Intuition Things In Life

Author:Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“The contemporary artist...is not bound to a fully conceived, previsioned end. His mind is kept alert to in-process discovery and a working rapport is established between the artist and his creation. While it may be true, as Nathan Lyons stated, 'The eye and the camera see more than the mind knows,' is it not also conceivable that the mind knows more than the eye and the camera can see?”

Knows Mind May Ends Eye Artist Process Creation Photography Discovery Cameras Bounds Photographer Contemporary Being True Rapport

Author:Jerry Uelsmann

“To me photography can be simultaneously both a record and a mirror or window of self-expression the camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye and yet, the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.”

Wells Self Eye Lying Memories Records Expression Photography Window Mirrors Cameras Photographer Visible Unseen Self Expression

Author:Eikoh Hosoe