"Quotes"

[dsphotog]

I've been reading an old book that I came across, Photographers on Photography, loaded with opinions & quotes.
Here's one,
"Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask "how," while others of a more curious nature will ask "why."
Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information."
Man Ray, Modern Photography Nov. 1957

[Vaughn]

Which was echoed by AA's (or preceded by, I don't know which) "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept" quote.

[sanchi heuser]

I've been reading an old book that I came across, Photographers on Photography, loaded with opinions & quotes.
Here's one,
"Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask "how," while others of a more curious nature will ask "why."
Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information."
Man Ray, Modern Photography Nov. 1957


"Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask "how," while others of a more curious nature will ask "why."

Andreas Feininger has written similar in his book "The complete photographer".

[Ari]

"Those are trees; I don't know from trees."

Richard Avedon upon viewing Ansel Adams' work.

[Jerry Bodine]

"Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment." - AA

[Bill Burk]

From Todd-Zakia, Photographic Sensitometry...

I am often drawn to this sentence in the chapter on Variability and Process Control, so I'll quote it...

"When we say that there is 'no' difference between sheets of film from the same box, we really mean that the differences that do exist are so small that they are not important to us".

[Dan Henderson]

I read somewhere, sometime, something to the effect of" "never take up photography. It will ruin your life." I think the quote was attributed to Hurter or Driffeld, but I am unable to find it again.

Anyone?

[Ari]

I read somewhere, sometime, something to the effect of" "never take up photography. It will ruin your life." I think the quote was attributed to Hurter or Driffeld, but I am unable to find it again.

Anyone?

Well, I've said it many times, though it was never attributed to me. :)

[jnantz]

"bob hope is interesting, da vinci's a genius" ivan galantic 1984
after overhearing a student commenting that da vinci's annunciation was "interesting"

[Hugo Zhang]

"Every so often I have gone back to Edinburgh, and each time I have made a few more photographs for the book.
Photography is ever thus. It will not let you forget it. Once you are really innoculated with the germ, you can never be free of it. Nor do you especially wish to be so freed, for photography gives you "an eye for beauty". It makes you look at life from another angle, for there are pictures everywhere, but we often pass them by unheeded until we take to photography.
As one grows older in photography its lure does not really decrease, and I honestly believe it even keeps one young in heart.
A man in love with his work does not grow old, as do those without an interest in life. It continually spurs him on to fresh conquests and ever richer achievement."
_Alvin Coburn

[tgtaylor]

Here's an interesting, but incomplete, quote as the preceding page was cut from from used book that I recently purchased:

"...practice with the painter for ages; but he may use all legitimate means of presenting the story he has to tell in the most agreeable manner, and it is of his imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ulgy; and to aim to elevate his subject, to avoid awkward forms, and to correct the unpicturesque." H. P. Robinson: Pictorial Effect in Photography. Quoted in The Linked Ring: The Sucession Movement in Photography in Britain 1892-1920, A Royal Photographis Society Publication, 1979.

Thomas

[Heroique]

“I wish I were in the field today making photos, not online quoting photographers.”


― [All our names here] :^(

[DennisD]

"One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are."- Minor White

"The key is to not let the camera, which depicts nature in so much detail, reveal just what the eye picks up, but what the heart picks up as well." - Paul Caponigro

“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” – Paul Caponigro

Thoughts I would like to live by in my photography.

[emh]

My favorite is still, "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." HCB

[Matt Miller]

To look at a thing is very different from seeing it – Oscar Wilde

The medium of photography can record not only what the eyes see, but that which the mind's eye sees as well. 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. -Wynn Bullock

[Brian Sims]

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. ~Aaron Levenstein

There's gotta be some wisdom about compositions in that...

[Doremus Scudder]

One of my favorite quotes, attributed to Gustav Mahler:

"Interesting is easy; beautiful is difficult."

Doremus

[Ari]

If one can apply Wayne Gretzky's philosophy:

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is."

"I couldn't beat people with my strength; I don't have a hard shot; I'm not the quickest skater in the league. My eyes and my mind have to do most of the work."

"Ninety percent of hockey is mental; the other half is physical."

[Mark Barendt]

Just a few words of practical advice in regard to the use of these lenses. Always fully expose, as you then get the best work out of your lens. Under-exposure (bad in any case) plays you queer pranks when the S. A. Lens is used. Never stop down to any great extent, as in so doing you lose much of the special quality of the lens. When you first get a P. & S. S.A. [Pinkham & Smith Semi-Achromatic] Lens, it is a good plan to take a nice, quiet, still-life subject, and practice focusing it as a large, light colored object that you can readily see. It might be interesting, also, to slip your ordinary lens on the camera, and make two comparative exposures. This kind of practice teaches you more than any amount of talk. I must warn you, however, of a danger if you make the comparative exposures that I have just referred to - you will probably throw the ordinary lens away. Don't do it. It is a salable commodity.

Coburn c. 1912 [Alvin Langdon Coburn]

[David R Munson]

Two favorites. The first I found in the beginning of "Way Beyond Monochrome," but I'd like to know where it was before that if anyone knows:

"Compensating for lack of skill with technology is progress toward mediocrity. As technology advances, craftsmanship recedes. As technology increases our possibilities, we use them less resourcefully. The one thing we’ve gained is spontaneity, which is useless without perception."
—David Vestal

And this remains probably my single favorite:
"I think the camera is something of a nuisance in a way. It’s recalcitrant. It’s determined to do one thing and you may want it to do something else. You have to fuse what you want and what the camera wants. It’s like a horse… You get to learn what it will do"
—Diane Arbus

[Chuck P.]

"Don't think of yourself as an artist, let others think of you as an artist, what you should concentrate on is your craft."

Stephen Spielberg

[numnutz]

From many Anonymous sources

"It didn't come out"

nn :(

[Randy]

I really like this thread - nothing like a good quote.

"Mysteriously, wonderfully, I bid farewell to what goes, I greet what comes; for what comes cannot be denied, and what goes cannot be detained."
~Chaung-tzu (The Tao of Photography - Seeing Beyond Seeing - Philippe L. Gross & S. I. Shapiro)

[Ari]

"Be calm and ordinary in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Edgard Varèse (I think)

[dsphotog]

"The camera is a license to explore".
Jerry Uelsmann

[Joe O'Hara]

A photograph is an instrument of love and revelation that must see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live in all things. - Ansel Adams, 150 Years of Photography , ISBN: 6301264258


How true.

This was from a website with quotations from many photographers, and others: http://www.photoquotes.com/

Very nice to go there and consider what others have thought.

Then we have to go out there and do it.

[Jim Graves]

"It's important to think but it's better to look. It's even better to look without thinking." Andre Kertesz

[Adrian Pybus]

I'm going to be terrible and quote myself :rolleyes: "Perfection is a moving target."

[Doremus Scudder]

I'm going to be terrible and quote myself :rolleyes: "Perfection is a moving target."

As long as we're quoting ourselves, here's my favorite quote of mine: "The simplest tools require the greatest skill."

Best

Doremus

[Adrian Pybus]

Doremus,

By "The simplest tools require the greatest skill." do you mean that with a simple tool it's so obvious if you've got it right but with a more complex tool you can fool others and even yourself that you know what you are doing?

Adrian

[cosmicexplosion]

A pen or sword Are simple tools.

[Tony Karnezis]

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
- Dorothea Lange

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.
- AA

Never forget that all the great photographs in history were made with more primitive camera equipment than you currently own.
- Brooks Jensen

There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.
- Ruth Bernhard

Take the damn picture already.
- Many of my friends, while I take a picture.

[Winger]

Not directly photographic, but it applies - "Not all those who wander are lost." - J. R. R. Tolkien (letter from Gandalf to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring)

[David R Munson]

That Tolkien quote has been one of the most comforting things in my adult life. Granted, for much of that time I've definitely felt lost, but the urge to wander is a much bigger thing than that.

[Heroique]

What’s wrong with being lost? ;^)

Dante gets lost in the very first line of The Divine Comedy.

Then he needs Virgil to get around, and later Beatrice.

That doesn’t stop him from being the best wanderer of all.

[Tony Karnezis]

One of my favorite quotes regarding my profession and hobbies.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle

[dsphotog]

Not directly photographic, but it applies - "Not all those who wander are lost." - J. R. R. Tolkien (letter from Gandalf to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring)

It doesn't matter how you get there, if you don't know where you're going.
-The Flying Karamazov Brothers
;)

[andrew gardiner]

'Everyone knows the usefulness of the useful. But not everyone knows the usefulness of the useless.' — Chuang-Tzu

[sun of sand]

From Todd-Zakia, Photographic Sensitometry...

I am often drawn to this sentence in the chapter on Variability and Process Control, so I'll quote it...

"When we say that there is 'no' difference between sheets of film from the same box, we really mean that the differences that do exist are so small that they are not important to us".



I like that quote. You must have stated it elsewhere on this site
wow how many quotes threads do we have

anyway
enlarge those sheets of film to something grander and you can see that while the "differences" are still seemingly small and insignificant they are now huge when confronted

stand atop the waves in a boat and look down
water
maybe a fish
stand in a boat in the middle of the ocean on increasinlgy larger waves
water
maybe a fish

but there are whales down there you just cant see because you wont go

[Kirk Gittings]

see below.

[dsphotog]

"The camera lens only sees what you want to see,
if you see something you don't like, just delete it and it's gone forever."
Jodi Arias

[Wayne Lambert]

How come we never see or hear much of Thomas Merton's photography? I saw a book of his photographs in the early 1970's and liked his quiet approach.

Wayne

[Brian Ellis]

"Ansel Adams had one zone he didn't tell anyone about."

Ted Orland