Quotes About Photography

We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant.

And in fact I don't believe there is such a thing as a definitive picture of something. The land is a living, breathing thing and light changes its character every second of every day. That's why I love it so much.

I think there can no longer be such a thing as hitting a wall on a photo shoot. If I ever hear a photographer say to me, 'OK, what else?' I should retire, because that should never happen now having experienced just how much the body is capable of doing.

I can't watch a movie where the actors are great and the photography sucks.

At the beginning, Edo was a photographer, and I was more of a talent scout and doing styling and modelling. Then all of a sudden, in 1977, he gave me a Polaroid camera, and I discovered that instead of having to go to a lab and develop the film, I could just take a click and get a picture! It was genius, and I was very good at manipulating it.

Many people misunderstand me - I'm quite happy to be called a photographer. All of a sudden, the art world has caught up with photography, and they are trying to hijack us.

I suddenly had to chase after my pictures... Pictures are like taxis during rush hour - if you're not fast enough, someone else will get there first.

All you need is a bad angle and suddenly you're 30 pounds overweight.

I had no agent, and I was getting approached by so many people that I tried to escape for a while because I couldn't believe that world. Photography is not an industry, and suddenly an industry came to me, so I sort of had to accept it in the end and get an agent.

At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country.

In France we have a law which doesn't allow the press to publish a photo that you didn't approve. It lets the paparazzi take the picture, but if they publish this picture, you have the choice to sue the newspaper. So me, I always sued them.

There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won't photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.

For me it was sort of career suicide to work in color, but I did it because I perceived myself from an early stage to be interested in seasonality - the changing of the seasons - that's what I deeply loved.

For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.

I am better suited to be behind the camera. Frankly, I don't miss being an actor.

People have always taken photos of themselves, either with camera timers or by handing their Nikons over to strangers in foreign countries and then paying large sums to get them back.

At Getty, I would have 20 different options for the same kind of event rather than focusing on the one image that will summarize the story.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

It's all about the light. Always face it, because that's how you give your face good angles. If you're outside when the sun is overhead, you're going to have dark circles from the sun creating shadows on your face. So no outdoor pictures between 12 and two!

Low light demanded 'fast' film, usually ISO 400 or higher; the fastest available would be about ISO 1000. When the sun was bright, you would reach for ISO 64 to avoid the burned-out look of overexposure.

People who are new to photography always pull their subjects directly into the sun, which is the most unflattering light in the world.

My dad's an amazing photographer, and he loves a Sunday market. So the house was full of all the stuff he'd buy, and frame.

You know, my dad wasn't a photographer or filmmaker by profession, but on Sundays, he would take pictures of me and my family or his pals horseback riding, and it was a means of communication and affection, a means of not being so dysfunctional with each other.

The length of exposure (one minute in sunlight) is still too long for the portrait. It was fifteen minutes when I first began my work. Progress may continue.