There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.
Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.
Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference.
It's marvelous, marvelous! Nothing will ever be as much fun. I'm going to photograph everything, everything!
When the novice photographer starts taking pictures, he carries his camera about and shoots everything that interests him. There comes a time when he must crystallize his ideas and set off in an particular direction. He must learn that shooting for the sake of shooting is dull and unprofitable.
Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field.
I enjoy traveling and recording far-away places and people with my camera. But I also find it wonderfully rewarding to see what I can discover outside my own window. You only need to study the scene with the eyes of a photographer.
People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result. I can stand in front of a leaf with a dew drop, or a rain drop, and stay there for ages just waiting for the right moment. Sure, people think I'm crazy, but who cares? I see more than they do!
The difference in 'seeing' between the eye and the lens should make it obvious that a photographer who merely points his camera at an appealing subject and expects to get an appealing picture in return, may be headed for a disappointment.
The photographer Ruth Bernhard used to tell me that this is like asking somebody how they evolved their signature. It is not something I've ever worked on consciously. I think style is just the end result of personal experience. It would be problematic for me to photograph in another style. I'm drawn to places and subject matter that have personal connections for me and I photograph in a way that seems right. Where does it all come from, who knows?
I think everything can be painted because painting can change reality; but everything cannot be photographed and the photographer often comes home empty-handed, with images which (often) have a documentary interest, but which rarely go further than that. One has to be completely available, very tenacious and admit that many subjects won't give any results... and a miracle sometimes happens, without warning.
Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace.
It therefore should be possible for even the photographer - just as for the creative poet or painter - to use the object as a stepping stone to a realm of meaning completely beyond itself.
Light is the photographic medium par excellence; it is to the photographer what words are to the writer; color and paint to the painter; wood, metal, stone, or clay to the sculptor.
The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other; and to that extent, I can accept myself.
I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I'll be there until the last minute, fighting.
The camera is a kind of license.
Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
I would like to become a better photographer. I'm working on that.
The most important lens you have is your legs
I think the important decision for a photographer is to choose a subject that intensely interests him or her.
I want to allow others to reveal and celebrate aspects of themselves that are usually hidden. My camera is a witness. It holds a light up for my subjects to help them feel their own essence, and gives them the courage to collaborate in the recording of these revelations.
For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.
The camera is a fluid way of encountering that other reality
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