Quotes About Photography

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

Everybody has this fond association with the car from Back to the Future, but most people have never seen one. I've seen people drive off the berm trying to take pictures. It ends up being dangerous.

Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance.

A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars.

The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system.

...after a certain quantity, photos apparently taken by chance, postcards chosen according to a passing mood, begin to trace an itinerary, to map the imaginary country that stretches out before us.

Photography is an ambiguous challenge to chance.

Everything is destined to reappear as simulation. Landscapes as photography, woman as the sexual scenario, thoughts as writing, terrorism as fashion and the media, events as television. Things seem only to exist by virtue of this strange destiny. You wonder whether the world itself isn't just here to serve as advertising copy in some other world.' Jean Baudrillard

For the chronically illiterate, a photo-op is worth much, much more than a thousand words.

Photography is light-writing, the language of images. Less abstract than written or spoken language, it selects images from the existing world of appearances and arranges them in patterns. The camera-eye doesn't think, it recognizes. It shows us what we already know, but don't know that we know.

You existed. You existed now as a fractal. Definition: A fractal is generally a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be broken into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole. Maybe I was a fractal. Maybe the photographer was a fractal. Maybe we were all fractals.

Nobody ever took my picture. They didn't want to. Or I wouldn't let them. You were the only exception.

I thought about the word profile and what a weird double meaning it had. we say we're looking at a person's profile online... and we assume it's the whole them we're seeing. But when a photographer takes a picture of a profile, you're only seeing half the face... It's never the way you would remember seeing them.

and all I could think was that I should have been the one with the camera, because the two of you were such a funny picture. Instead, we have this blurry, happy shot, which must mean something to you if you carry it around like this, folded to fit.

That's what makes it a good photograph. You think you know what's going on in her head. But the truth? No matter how good a photograph is, you can never tell what's going on in the person's mind.

I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece but Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!

she took pictures of germs, viruses, and people reacting to germs and viruses. On weekends, for extra money, she photographed weddings, which really wasn't that much of a stretch

It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it. I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!

The camera has replaced actual looking and turned life into evidence. It drives me crazy. February 1, 2014

I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!

Two middle-aged American couples came back from the dining car and, as soon as they could see Mt. Fuji, past Numazu, stood at the windows eagerly taking photographs. By the time Fuji was completely visible, down to the fields at its base, they seemed tired of photographing and had turned their backs to it. The

I know a man who photographed the view he saw from the window of the room where he made love and not the face of the woman he loved there.

Every shoot's cool and a new experience, so I try to absorb everything and everyone I can.

I just love photographing. I don't do it for anyone else.