Best photography & lenses Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it truthfully. Look at the reporters and at the amateur photographer! They both have only one goal; to record a memory or a document. And that is pure photography.”

Looks Reason Goal Interest Memories Careers Records Subjects Pure Photography Trade Photographer Refuse Tricks Betray Reporters Documents Lenses Virtuosity

Author:Andre Kertesz

“When you see what you express through photography, you realize all the things that can no longer be the objectives of painting. Why should an artist persist in treating subjects that can be established so clearly with the lens of a camera?”

Should Artist Realizing Subjects Painting Photography Cameras Objectives Persist Lenses

Author:Pablo Picasso

“It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.”

Whole Photography Instruments Lenses Exaggeration Whole Truth

Author:Walter J. Phillips

“Not only does a lens distort forms, but the ordinary plate makes an unholy mess of colour in its tone relations. Yellow becomes black, and blue white. Black sunflowers against a white sky - what a travesty!”

Doe Form Black White Sky Photography Ordinary Relation Blue Mess Tone Colour Yellow Plates Lenses Sunflower Travesty

Author:Walter J. Phillips

“Photography is much more about elimination than inclusion. The images we make with a lens typically eliminate ninety percent of our field of view and everything that is out of our field of view. The shutter slices time, eliminating all moments before and after it opens and closes. Three dimensions are reduced to two. And in some cases color is removed. How can we call these kinds of artifacts unaltered?”

Kind Two Moments Three Views Cases Fields Color Photography Percent Dimensions Inclusion Lenses Ninety Elimination Eliminating Artifacts Shutters Before And After Three Dimensions

Author:John Paul Caponigro

“Just put on the lens and go.”

Photography Lenses

Author:Miroslav Tichy

“The lens freezes time and space in what may be an optical slavery or, contrarily, the crystallization of meaning. The limits of the lens' vision are esthetically often a virtue.”

May Space Vision Virtue Limits Photography Slavery Time And Space Lenses Freeze Freeze Time

Book:A guide to better photography

Source: A guide to better photography

“Behind the lens, I found refuge and freedom, distance and connection, an intoxicating way to tame the huge, chaotic world.”

World Way Found Behinds Huge Photography Connections Distance Refuge Lenses Chaotic

Book:Summer of Storms

Source: Summer of Storms

“Of course, it may be that the arts of writing and photography are antithetical. The hope and aim of a word-handler is that he maycommunicate a thought or an impression to his reader without the reader's realizing that he has been dragged through a series of hazardous or grotesque syntactical situations. In photography the goal seems to be to prove beyond a doubt that the cameraman, in his great moment of creation, was either hanging by his heels from the rafters or was wedged under the floor with his lens in a knothole.”

“The best zoom lens is your legs.”

Photography Legs Lenses Zoom

Author:Ernst Haas

“Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'.”

Looks Two Steps Photography Photographer Photograph Wide Angle Lenses Camera Lenses

Author:Ernst Haas

“I come from a visual background. I used to work in the camera department at Warner Bros. when I was a teenager. I grew up dusting lenses and learning about photography.”

Used Grew Photography Grew Up Cameras Backgrounds Teenager Visuals Department Lenses Bros Warner Bros

Author:Colin Hanks

“Nothing proves the truth of surrealism so much as photography. The Zeiss lens has unexpected faculties of surprise!”

Prove Photography Surprise Unexpected Faculty Lenses Surrealism

Author:Salvador Dali

“Photography is solitary and there are lags between seeing with your eyes and seeing through the lens, and then seeing the image on your computer... I often see things after the fact. So there’s a revelatory quality. And this definitely includes a sense of playfulness, because you’re not sure what the consequences are going to be.”

Facts Eye Quality Seeing Computer Photography Consequence Not Sure Solitary Lenses Playfulness Lag

Author:Christian Marclay

“The lens, that allegedly impartial eye, permits all possible distortions of reality... The importance of photography lies not only in the fact that it is a creation, but above all in the fact that it is one of the most effective means of shaping our ideas and influencing our behavior.”

Mean Ideas Facts Reality Eye Lying Influence Creation Behavior Photography Importance Permit Lenses Distortion

Author:Gisele Freund

“Photography is a life of learning. That's all I want from photography. I don't want the money. I don't need the fame. I don't need the admiration. I'd like all of those things, but I don't need them. Because what I get from photographing is learning. I have spent my life learning by looking through a lens.”

Want Needs Fame Photography Admiration Lenses Life Learning

Author:Rondal Partridge

“I discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings. For the first time, I looked through a lens - and photography immediately started to invade my life.”

Firsts Young Chance Wife Building Photography First Time Cameras My Wife Paris Architect Lenses

Author:Sebastiao Salgado

“Photography is inextricably linked with life; the photographer is not invisibly behind the camera but projecting a life-attitude through the lens to create an interference pattern with the image. Who he is, what he believes, not only becomes important to know intellectually, but also becomes revealed emotionally and visibly through a body of work.”

Knows Believe Important Body Behinds Attitude Photography Cameras Photographer Patterns Linked Lenses Interference Life Attitude

Author:Bill Jay

“Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.”

“If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it's already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.”

People Ifs Inspirational Fronts Photography Cameras Instruments Photographer Photograph Compassionate Lenses Photography By Photographers Inspirational Photography Great Photography Camera And Photography Inspiring Photography

Author:Eve Arnold

“It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the art historians.”

Doe Art Used Artist Photography Mirrors Photographer Aids Upset Historian Lenses Hiv

Author:Chuck Close

“If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

People Ifs Care Given Photography Cameras Instruments Photographer Compassionate Lenses Inspirational Photography Camera And Photography

Book:The Unretouched Woman

Source: The Unretouched Woman

“I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.”

Source: Edward Weston on photography

“My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.”

“Give half a dozen men the same camera, lenses and plates, and send them to the same place to do the same thing, and all the results will be alike, or so nearly alike as to reveal the real mechanicalness of photography. Yet, curiously enough, this is just one of the most difficult things a photographer can be set to do, to exactly repeat himself, or another. He may use the identical apparatus, know the subject perfectly, and yet be totally unable to bring away an exact replica.”

“The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.”

“I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.”

Want Effects Photography Photographer Artistic Lenses Interference Starks

Book:The daybooks of Edward Weston

Source: The daybooks of Edward Weston

“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

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Photography Quotes