Quotes About Photographing

#1. Having exhausted every possibility at the moment when he was coming full circle, Antonino realised that photographing photographs was the only course that he had left - or, rather, the true course he had obscurely been seeking all this time. (Last line of the story The Adventure of a Photographer )

Italo Calvino

#2. I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.

Harold Feinstein

#3. Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.

Edward Weston

#4. Oh, we"re just scattering some dead fish about town, breaking some windows, photographing naked guys, hanging out in sky-scraper lobbies at three-fifteen in the morning, that kind of thing. "Not much", I answered.

John Green

#5. You must feel an affinity for what you are photographing. You must be part of it, and yet remain sufficiently detached to see it objectively. Like watching from the audience a play you already know by heart.

George Rodger

#6. My first serious project was photographing badgers - very, very difficult as they are shy and nocturnal.

Nigel Dennis

#7. I'm not photographing the model in the classic sense; the model is playing a part in my photographs. It's more like theater. I always work with models I know, and I let them participate in deciding how to act their part.

Kim Weston

#8. Mortification is basic to the act of photographing. The person is mobile, ... then I freeze one moment in his movement, a mere five-hundredth of a second of that person's life-time. That's a very meager or small extract from a life.

August Sander

#9. I'm photographing myself out there. Not myself physically, but mentally. It's my take on the world.

Bruce Gilden

#10. For seven years, I made films in the cinema verite tradition - photographing what was happening without manipulating it. Then I realised I wanted to make things happen for myself, through feature films.

Mira Nair

#11. I just love photographing things and putting them together to tell a story.

Christopher Nolan

#12. I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people.

Richard Avedon

#13. Doctors said that the test most commonly used to screen for colon cancer doesn't go far enough. They're recommending a procedure that involves photographing the entire colon. I say, don't vie CBS an idea for another reality show.

Bill Maher

#14. Whats up, Q?" asked Gus.
Oh, we're just scattering some dead fish about town, breaking some windows, photographing naked guys, hanging out in skyscraper lobbies at three-fifteen in the morning, that type of thing.
"Not much," I answered.

John Green

#15. I Love photographing. It's that simple.

Stuart Franklin

#16. My way of photographing is my way of life. I photograph from my experience, my way of seeing things ...

Sebastiao Salgado

#17. I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don't find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges.

William Albert Allard

#18. I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film.

Mary Ellen Mark

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

Josef Koudelka

#20. Sometimes when I am photographing a major news event, I am suddenly overwhelmed by helplessness.

Lynsey Addario

#21. Born Berlin 1931, Germany, father a British diplomat, mother an American artist. Educated at various schools all over the world. 1958 Settled down to live in London. 1966 Became interested in photography through photographing my young children. No formal training.

Fay Godwin

#22. A woman said to me when she first sat down, You're photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?

Imogen Cunningham

#23. Ultimately, the reward is the process - the process of photographing and discovering and trying to understand why and what am I photographing.

Alex Webb

#24. Everyone concedes that photography is now a medium of exchange as much as a mode of documentation ... photographing has become the visual equivalent of cellphone chatter.

Geoffrey Batchen

#25. To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step.

Kim Weston

#26. When you're working on a film, it's almost like photographing paintings at a museum. You're photographing somebody else's world. I just try and interpret it and make it real, and make it what the actors are about, what the director is about, and what the film is about.

Mary Ellen Mark

#27. My stepfather gave me a Kodak camera when I was 17 years old. I started working at a local photo store in Le Havre, France, taking passport pictures and photographing weddings.

Patrick Demarchelier

#28. Photographing expresses human desire to preserve passing time. It is like a man struggling with time that elapses, and in general - a desire to preserve oneself.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

#29. The idea of photographing an Arab man naked and having him simulate homosexual activity, and having an American GI woman in the photographs, is the end of society in their eyes.

Seymour Hersh

#30. If I stage things too much and nothing changes in the act of photographing, then I might as well have not taken the picture: If the whole thing already exists in my head, then I haven't learned anything. The tension lies between the staging and the unpredictability.

Justine Kurland

#31. It doesn't matter if you're photographing a porter in a market in Marrakech or you're photographing the king of Morroco. You have the same sympathetic approach to everybody. You be nice to everybody, basically.

Albert Watson

#32. People think photography is about photographing. To me, it's about relationships.

Lynsey Addario

#33. It adds up, but I deem it all necessary, even the camera gear. I enjoy photographing the otherworldly colors and shapes presented in the convoluted depths of slot canyons and the prehistoric artwork preserved in their alcoves.

Aron Ralston

#34. Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

Duane Michals

#35. Today, it's almost the outlier if people are not photographing what they ate and then sharing that in real time.

Danny Meyer

#36. Photographing friends means that there's a spontaneity to the images. I have a lot of love for my friends and family, and I love taking cool pictures of them.

Suki Waterhouse

#37. I didn't react visually. This girl came up and knelt over the body and let out a God-awful scream that made me click the camera. (On photographing Mary Vecchio with slain student Jeffery Miller during the shootings of students at Kent State, April, 1970.)

John Filo

#38. I just happened to have my camera and be photographing my friends. It was totally innocent; there was no purpose to the photographs. There was a purity to them that wasn't planned; it was realism.

Larry Clark

#39. Over the years, I have perfected the art of dancing and photographing at the same time: it's a great double act. If you're dancing, you are joining in. If you stand there rigid, you are not in the flow of things.

Martin Parr

#40. I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

James Nachtwey

#41. It is the photographing of ordinary things, in extraordinary light, that produces extraordinary photographs.

David Young

#42. Since 1873, I have been back four or five times. I have used the best cameras and the most sensitive emulsions on the market. I have snapped my shutter, morning, noon and afternoon. I have never come close to matching those first plates. (On photographing The Mountain of the Holy Cross)

William Henry Jackson

#43. When I'm photographing, I think - like any rescue worker who deals with tragedy - you have to have some protective barrier around your heart so you can do your job. You tend to have a delayed reaction to things. I feel things more deeply after I put the camera down.

Carol Guzy

#44. For a time, people were getting arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. So to me, what it meant to do photography also changed. There was a new kind of politics to it - something that was very aggressive and dangerous - and a presumption that it would reveal some kind of truth or evidence.

Trevor Paglen

#45. I'm very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I've barely heard of them.

Diane Arbus

#46. I remember the first time I went out on the street to shoot pictures. I was in downtown Philadelphia, and I just took a walk and started making contact with people and photographing them, and I thought, 'I love this. This is what I want to do forever.' There was never another question.

Mary Ellen Mark

#47. There's nothing worth photographing more than 100 yards from the car

Brett Weston

#48. I never went to school for photography and started when I was pretty young. I was somewhere around 12 or 13. I started photographing as a hobby and carried that hobby through high school and university.

Lynsey Addario

#49. I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both.

Garry Winogrand

#50. I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.

Charles Bukowski

#51. There's a rapport that any photographer is going to have with his subject matter. And if you don't have a rapport, you're going to find the task of photographing it difficult.

Bruce Barnbaum

#52. I have been photographing people dancing for 20 or 30 years now, and I think I will eventually do a book of dancing photos.

Martin Parr

#53. Finding a protest without placards is like photographing a hippie without a bong.

Steve Merrick

#54. People tracking your life and photographing you anywhere you go, that can make you crazy.

Tom Selleck

#55. Oddly, I'd been to most of the locations where I started photographing slavery many times before. I even considered some of them homes-away-from-home. But there can be dark corners in familiar places.

Lisa Kristine

#56. I spend my days photographing beautiful things for other people. ... Two of my favorite things: breakfast + morning light.

Jennifer Causey

#57. Photographing attractive people who were doing attractive things in attractive places. (Summary of his photographic career)

Slim Aarons

#58. Don't expect things to happen fast. Be empathetic with the people you are photographing. Don't be concerned about money.

Lynsey Addario

#59. Being a woman is just a marvelous plus in photographing. Men like to be photographed by women, it becomes flirtatious and fun, and women feel less as if they're expected to be in a relationship.

Eve Arnold

#60. My surprises come usually once I start rolling and photographing.

Kim Weston

#61. I started photographing people on the street during World War II. I used a little box Brownie. Nothing too expensive.

Bill Cunningham

#62. I have been photographing the portrait of an end of an era, as machines and computers replace human workers. What we have in these pictures is an archeology.

Sebastiao Salgado

#63. It's one thing when you are photographing others, but when you are exposing yourself and your insecurities, that's the biggest risk. That's always scary.

Petra Collins

#64. I'm Jewish and respect the traditions of Judaism, but through all the time I've spent photographing nature, I also have a deep appreciation for the power of the universe. No, not the power of the universe, but just celebrating life.

Louie Schwartzberg

#65. I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself.

Georgia O'Keeffe

#66. I am a storyteller. I've never been interested in just taking the single image and moving on. I always like to stay with the people I'm photographing for long periods of time.

Larry Clark

#67. Photographing plants makes you look carefully and become aware of the many solutions plants provide to human problems

Andrea Jones

#68. It quickly came to be that I grew interested in photographing whatever was there wherever I happened to be. For any reason.

William Eggleston

#69. [The most important factor in making a good picture is] to know who or what you are photographing. It is not about photography; it should be about life.

Mona Kuhn

#70. It's important for you to spend your time photographing things that matter to you. You need to understand the things that have meaning to you, and not what others think is important for you.

Steve McCurry

#71. I know now that before I take a picture I have to be sure about how I feel about the subjects. What I don't know is if I should explain to them what I'm doing while I'm photographing them ...

Tina Barney

#72. I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Geneve, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe.

Francois Gautier

#73. The thing about film is that your eye is selective. Film isn't. You have to make film do what you want. Simply photographing something doesn't do it. You have to know how to apply light and know what it does on film.

Gordon Willis

#74. I think I misunderstood Instagram and just thought it was people photographing their friends, and discovered there were a number of people, a number of artists, who were taking it very seriously and doing very imaginative work with Instagram as the medium.

Stephen Shore

#75. Photographing a cake can be art.

Irving Penn

#76. I'm not interested into victim photography. Photographing people suffering and putting it on a museum wall is too weird.

Richard Misrach

#77. I didn't actually begin photographing, or even visit New York, for the first time until I was 26.

Brandon Stanton

#78. I don't want someone photographing my cellulite - I can't take it!

Shania Twain

#79. It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

Eve Arnold

#80. He [Andy warhol] went out every evening to five or six parties with a tape recorder in one pocket and a camera with extra film and batteries in the other pocket, constantly recording and photographing everyone he came across.

Bob Colacello

#81. I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing.

Imogen Cunningham

#82. I photographed the entire thing in color because to photograph it in black and white would be to keep it as a tragedy. Because there is a tragic element to photographing, in this case not war, but the collapse. It was just destruction.

Joel Meyerowitz

#83. Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women.

Lynsey Addario

#84. When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera, and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.

Bill Brandt

#85. It was as if my eyes were a camera and I was photographing the moment, knowing that I would keep the photograph forever.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#86. I'm photographing all the time. I'm such a visual person and I don't want to miss that moment.

Danny Clinch

#87. I'm as interested in photographing the film crew as much as the actors and actresses.

Paul Walker

#88. Photographing these flowers has made me see the world differently. It was as if I had lifted a secret veil from a subject I had loved and appreciated my whole life. I offer these photographs with the hope that they will open a new visual or meditative universe for you as well.

Joyce Tenneson

#89. The first day at the power plant I found myself photographing some steam vents on the roof of the structure. And I remember consciously thinking that they were just like trees but they were metal.

John Sexton

#90. The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas.

David LaChapelle

#91. The more you do, the more you realize there is to do, what a vast object the metropolis is, and how the work of photographing could go on forever.

Berenice Abbott

#92. Recently, I can't seem to take a straight photograph without thinking that what I am photographing won't be the final image - like the world in front of me is not good enough or something.

Idris Khan

#93. My strength is looking for composition and light, and I think those things come in the quieter times of war or photographing people affected on the margins of war - civilians, refugees; that is where I really excel.

Lynsey Addario

#94. I was flying planes before I was driving cars. I started gliding when I was fourteen, about when I started photographing. I was a geeky kid, and the camera was a way in high school for me to have some power. Flying was, too, I guess.

Michael Light

#95. I've never been comfortable photographing people I know, myself included. I guess I prefer the mystery of strangers.

Alec Soth

#96. It has been important to me, as an historian of photography, to understand photography by photographing.

Beaumont Newhall

#97. To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.

Dorothea Lange

#98. I'm not photographing anything naked these days. I haven't been concentrating on bodies recently.

Robert Mapplethorpe

#99. I was making stickers for guys' bands. I was in the front row photographing bands, booking bands, doing all of the kind of backstage stuff, and I didn't even think for a second I could do it, and then I saw Babes in Toyland, and all that changed.

Kathleen Hanna

#100. The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.

Diane Arbus