Quotes by
Anonymous

A picture is worth a thousand words; a slide show is both.

A photograph can be as striking and as haunting as a great painting or a fine poem.

If you saw a man drowning and you could either save him or photograph the event...what kind of film would you use?

Photography teaches that how well you see has nothing to do with how well you see.

Once photography enters your bloodstream, it's like a disease.

Never show a customer two prints of different density. He will ask you to print a third with a density between the two.

Every time someone tells me how sharp my photos are, I assume that it isn't a very interesting photograph. If it was, they would have more to say.

The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer.

The type of photographs you make, the subjects you single out, reveal the person inside of you. How close you get to your subjects reveals how close you want to get.

That a horse rushing along at the rate of a mile in one and two thirds of a minute (more than 17 yards in a second) should be seized by photographic art so as to show every limb well and clearly delineated would have seemed wonderful indeed to the early professors of that art.

Everything I take a picture of, I try to think of it as a new invention for someone to see. If it comes out perfect it is because I put my heart into it. And if the viewer likes it, it is because his or her heart and emotions accepted it.

When we care, we will not forget. The picture in our head or the vivid printed picture will remind us. Without care, we would not remember, only see.

Pictures hold life's experiences. And I feel that with every experience you learn something. Therefore, you learn something with every picture you take.

When I walk around my little world I observe the oddities, the fun of life in the middle of harsh reality. I think one can laugh in pain. Maybe this is what we need to pull us out of the absurdity of it all. I always thought how strange it is that one can find beauty even in the most horrible images. I care for what I photograph. I make love with my eyes through the viewfinder. I caress the image on that piece of paper as it appears like magic, a ray of light emerging from total darkness.

We capture your memories forever.

The pictures you want tomorrow, you have to take today.

You don't take a photography. You ask, quietly, to borrow it.

John Sheckler, a former photographer for the Standard Times in New Bedford, Massachusetts, said this when asked how many photographers does it take to screw in a light bulb. - "Only one. However, it takes two editors and three reporters to decide if the bulb should be turned clockwise or counter clockwise or just shoved in."

When Jack London had his portrait made by the noted San Francisco photographer Arnold Genthe, London began the encounter with effusive praise for the photographic art of his friend and fellow bohemian, Genthe. "you must have a wonderful camera...It must be the best camera in the world...You must show me your camera." Genthe then used his standard studio camera to make what has since become a classic picture of Jack London. When the sitting was finished, Genthe could not contain himself: "I have read your books, Jack, and I think they are important works of art. You must have a wonderful typewriter."

First Person : "Is that camera fully automatic?" Second Person : "No. You have to take the film to the chemist!"

If an old man asks a young girl for a date...
That's his business.
If the young girl accepts...
That's her business.
If the old man and the girl decide to marry...
That's their business.
However, if they want great wedding photographs...
THAT'S MY BUSINESS!!!

Synonym for the word “photographer” shooter, camera bug, lensmen, lenswomen, send out a camera.

A photograph is worth a thousand words - but which thousand words?

To see, to record and to comment. The essence of documentary is the communication not of imagined things but of real things only.

Photographic portraiture is the best feature of the Fine Arts for the million {sic} that the ingenuity of man has yet devised. It has in this sense swept away many of the illiberal distinctions of rank and wealth, so that the poor man who possesses but a few shillings can command as perfect a lifelike portrait of his wife or child as Sir Thomas Lawrence painted for the most distinguished Sovereigns of Europe.

Photography is a medium that captures a specific event at a specific time in a specific space.

Learn from the mistakes of others, because you won't have time to make them all yourself.

Success is what happens when 10,000 hours of preparation meet with one moment of opportunity.

[Win Parks] was really alive only when he was looking through the lens. He existed in a world of fantasy, whether before such fairy castles as this Islamic mosque in Istanbul, or anywhere. The colors he loved most were soft ones. He lived and breathed through a camera, and preferred muted days..

I've noticed in my photography that I do a lot better when I'm on vacation. I'm more relaxed and true to my own senses. I really think that's the only route to pure happiness. Letting go of rules.

It is best that a photographer not simply take a picture. A photographer has a responsibility to share a visual experience with others by every possible means.

A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person's life that reveal greater truths.

A shutter only clicks quickly after a sensitive heart has felt the subject a long time.

That which matters most is more than f-stops and lenses, more than pens and papers, more than notes and strings, more than knives and clay. That which matters most is a child's laugh, a lover's hug, an open heart.

The truth is in all things. Weston found truth in a bed pan.

Photographers are like the wolves in the wild whose presence slips silently into the background. These journalists record the events as observers, marking them for history.

f8 and being there.

I always thought good photos were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn't that good.

A photo no longer tells the truth. It suggests just one possibilty.

...like staring at an anonymous nineteenth-century sepia photograph you pick up in a junk store, wondering at the face looking out at you from under the funny hairdo. To ask who she is hopeless now because all the connections, every friend, every relative, even every acquaintance is dead and gone.

The amateur is, presumably, a man of more cultivated education and greater leisure than the professional photographer, and may reasonably be expected to have a keener sense of the aesthetic principles, and a more educated knowledge of the history and science of art than his professional brother - better skilled though the latter may be in the technique of his art.

Some photographs make a statement others ask a question. Some people like the obvious others like ambiguity. Both types of images and both types of people are correct, just different.

There are three phases to awareness: to look, to see, and to perceive. A camera looks. A mind sees. A heart perceives.

T'isn't the camera at all, 'tis the fella behind the camera.

Stop babbling and just take good pictures.

Take off the lens cap, stupid.

Have the time of your life but be careful who sees the negatives.

A photographer does not operate a camera in order to merely take pictures. Photographic work is always personal. A photograph reveals the photographer.

Through constant practice you will become so skilled technically that you will no longer need to think consciously of the camera's operation. At that point you will break the machine wall between you and the person photographed.

A photograph is just a picture if it doesn't say anything.

Amateurs talk about equipment. Professionals talk about photos.

The quickest way to make money at photography is to sell your camera.

The weight of words. The shock of photos.

The pictures you want tomorrow, you have to take today.

Love for photography. Eat sleep and breathe it. Become a photograph.

MINOLTA - When you are the camera and the camera is you.

You don’t take a photography. You ask, quietly, to borrow it.

You press the button and we do the rest.

If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark leaks out.

The world's coming to an end! ...Quick, grab your camera!

You know what a camera is? A mirror with memory.

Do not concern yourself with the questions, "What is art?" or "Who is an artist?" Everything is art. If what you see and do comes from your heart, you are an artist.

Your equipment does not matter as long as you are comfortable with it. Comfortable is an important word, It is the opposite of self-conscious.

It is not enough to be a good photographer. You also need to be a good person who takes pictures.

Our eyes are shooting millions of frames a day. We know we're selective because we can recall only a few images the next day, and even less thereafter.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand words cant describe a good picture.

Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a laborer's fireplace will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.

If you see it you missed it.

Someday I'd like to meet the guy who shot your portfolio.

Don't you understand this business? If we can't find photos, we bloody well go out and make photos!

Photography is like golf, you never master it, but you can always get better.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

the film that survived a bomb blast, got wet when your boat sank , survivived x-ray machines at 5 different airports was ruined when someone opened the darkroom door and let all the dark out.

pictures are just there to fill spaces around the stories.

Photography is way to tell others how you feel about what you see.

Sports are a lot like photography. If you don't focus, all you will get is the negative.

A good photograph will make an uncommonly good image of common subjects.

The brave ones were shooting the enemy, the crazy ones were shooting film.

When one picks up ones camera and freezes a moment in time we all get a glimpse of ones soul

Where is the picture? Deadline is in an less than an hour away, this is a multi-million dollar operation........ and it waits for no one!

Photographers are violent people. First they frame you, then they shoot you, then they hang you on the wall.

Putting the camera in their faces is always the hardest. But you just have to do it.

The only thing wrong with the camera [Canon D10] is that it doesn't walk by it self...

Business is business. The sooner photographers start learning about and navigating business instead of wasting time trying to control the inevitable forces at play, the better it will be for that photographer.

Photography is like a lemon, sour to some, but lemonade to others.

What we can easily see is only a small percentage of what is possible. Imagination is having the vision to see what is just below the surface; to picture that which is essential, but invisible to the eye.

Some of us cynics say that "the quickest way to make a million dollars in photography, is to start with two million dollars".

The only difference between Pornography and Art is the lighting.

Most cameras and most lenses are better than most photographers.

If you buy a flute, you own a flute. So why is it that when you buy a camera, you're a photographer?

You give a man color film, and sooner or later you will catch him out in the garden taking pictures of flowers. This seems inevitable. He just can't resist. He's got this colorful film, y'see, and he spies this colorful flower, and...well, not being a chimp, he does realize that there are enough flower pictures in the world already, and that the one he's about to take isn't going to be of any use to anybody. But he can't help himself. It's too great a temptation to resist. He succumbs to the weakness.

In the coming struggle between the capitalist and socialist worlds, the political photograph will play an important role as a convincing visual means of propaganda. The workers of the world have to fight for control of this means of propaganda, to then turn it into a weapon of class struggle...

It is to be understood that worker photographers intending to exhibit … are to concentrate on the photo of class struggle and proletarian life. No bourgeois portraiture, nudes, landscapes, still lifes, will be exhibited.

God made the light, I just paint with it. Amen.

Everybody loves to have their picture took. Everybody.

“Mr. Peters: Got a question for you. Which magazine sells the most copies? Mark Lewis: Those with girls on the front covers and no front covers on the girls.

There are three types of photographers. The first are with goals of one day selling out to a magazine or whomever has a wallet. The second are the hobbyists who prance around the city with their Leicas. The third is Robert Frank. Thank you for sharing your pictures.

Jimmy Olsen: "I didn't have my camera with me." Perry White: "A photographer eats with his camera, a photographer sleeps with his camera!" Lois Lane: "I'm glad I'm a writer."

A photograph has always been a lie. We can not freeze time, we are not 2 dimensional, we are not the size of an 8 x 10 glossy, we are not composed in geometric paterns, but we are real. Photos have power because of this illusion. Using the power and exploring it as communication of the collective sub-consciennce can be fun to.

There can't be two identical photographs in this world. Not even if it is from the same photographer.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

Mr. Peters: Got a question for you. Which magazine sells the most copies? Mark Lewis: Those with girls on the front covers and no front covers on the girls.

Sy Parrish: Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget.

Sy Parrish: According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the word "snapshot" was originally a hunting term.

Life is like photography. You use the negatives to develop.

Success is not judged by how far you climbed but how many people you took with you

Of what use are lens and light to those who lack in mind and sight?

Anyone can take a picture...a person with a passion sees the picture before it's taken.

Let's go in the darkroom and see what develops.

The whole question of success and failure [in photography] resolves itself into an investigation of the capacities of the machine and well may we be satisfied with the rich gifts it bestows, without straining it into a competition with art. For everything for which art, so-called, has hitherto been the means but no the end, photography is the allotted agent – for all that requires mere manual correctness, and mere manual slavery, without any employment of the artistic feeling, she is the proper and therefore the perfect medium. She is made for the present age in which the desire for art resides in a small minority, but the craving, or rather necessity for cheap, prompt, and correct facts in the public at large. Photography is the purveyor of such knowledge to the world. She is sworn witness of everything presented to her view.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a talking picture worth?

If you think Nikon is beyond your reach…It’s not!

The last thing I need is another picture of me looking like a porcelain doll.

Did you ever hear the saying, ‘A picture holds a thousand words’?

I took a course in art last winter. I learnt the difference between a fine oil painting, and a mechanical thing, like a photograph. The photograph shows only the reality. The painting shows not only the reality, but the dream behind it. It's our dreams, doctor, that carry us on. They separate us from the beasts. I wouldn't want to go on living if I thought it was all just eating, and sleeping, and taking my clothes off, I mean putting them on...

There's no way you can possess someone forever. Even in a photograph, there's no way.

Photographic portraiture is the best feature of the fine arts for the million that the ingenuity of man has yet devised. It has in this sense swept away many of the illiberal distinctions of rank and wealth, so that the poor man who possesses but a few schillings can command as perfect a lifelike portrait of his wife or child as Sir Thomas Lawrence painted for the most distinguished sovereigns of Europe.

The camera captures light, our minds capture images.

If I could have put it into words I would have written it down. But I couldn't, so I took a picture.

The still photograph is to moving pictures what poetry is to prose - less comprehensive perhaps, less literal even, yet somehow capable of expressing a deeper truth.

All the photographs in the world, when summed together couldn't possibly amount to a moment... So every human being is faced with the same dilemma: The photograph, or the moment?

Portraiture is a window to the soul.

Rookies seeks sharper immage.
Pro's seeks to make money.
Artist seeks light.

Who will deny that “photos without bother” is an ideal in photography; and a dream camera, one that fits over the eyes like a pair of glasses and operates by a flick of an eyelash.

Between casual snapshooters and creative photographers who take the casual seriously, there seems to be another interface. An “aesthetic of snapshot” has appeared which partakes of both immediate seeing and disciplined craft. The strongest of this school, Gary Winograd, Lee Friedlander, Emmet Gowin, have a fine quality of perception. Perhaps they have always been intuitive, have always felt their way into the subject and reached a degree of penetration that zone system photographers earn by hard work.

There are some visual arts which need an introduction – we feel, however, that with photography this is not necessary. A “true” photograph is strong, silent and speaks for itself.

The illiteracy of the future will be ignorance not of reading or writing, but of photography.

Viewers will be able to see the continuing tradition of pictorial photography, which continues largely unruffled by modern movements. This conservatism with variations is one of the strengths of the photographic society exhibitions and one of the facets that is periodically attacked by graphic artists and fine art critics.

One can hold conferences these days without ministers, but not without Dr. Salomon.

Atget was no pictorial photographer of pretty superficiality; he took reality by the scruff of the neck and threw it in the face of his viewers.

They say that pictures don’t lie, but that’s not really true anymore.

Most people don't take snapshots of the little things. The used Band-Aid, the guy at the gas station, the wasp on the Jell-O. But these are the things that make up the true picture of our lives. People don't take pictures of these things.

Unlike a painter, a photographer starts with something finished and works backward.

Beauty…it rubs against one’s tounge
it hangs there
hurting one
insisting on its own existence
finally it gets so one cannot stand the pain
then one must have beauty extracted.

What you don’t know is that the client would have paid double, and what the client doesn’t know is that you’d have done it for half...

No one want ordinary photographers anymore. No one wants regular photographers. They want someone that can bring some kind of special lens or special expertise to the conversation.
You have convictions, you have ideas. They may not be perfect, but just get them out there. Give them a shot.

Photographers have evidently made up their minds that it is high time to introduce some new style of portraiture to the public, and we entirely agree with them... One thing is clear. Photographers must pull together if they want to make a definite step. This we urge upon them very earnestly, and if any suggestions come to us on the subject we will readily give them the publicity....

The photojournalist’s job is a simple one.... To create a still image, iconic and truthful, that can replace a thousand words.

Good photographs are made, not taken.

One moment, one second, one push of the button. One single movement to capture that one single frame. An instant based on the instinct.

Single image can save the world.

What do you do for a living? "I shoot people."

Photography is the healthful hobby. It takes you out of doors, yet causes no trouble or fatigue.

Hitherto photography has been principally content with representing Truth. Can its sphere not be enlarged ? And may it not aspire to delineate Beauty, too?

Don't let a call interrupt your photo.

You date your cameras, but your marry your lenses.

Julia Margaret Cameron, 1815-79, took up photography at the age of 48—and was an enthusiastic portraitist thereafter. She was a true primitive, shooting by instinct when the picture looked right. She was celebrated for her 'soft focus' techniques, but she simply had not mastered the dos and don'ts of sharp focusing and depth of field. The results were bold and magnificent.

Is it true or merely a canard, that the French photographers have introduced property babies into their studios to do duty instead of the squalling, kicking, little darlings which so often destroy the tempers of the most amiable of operators? ... I remember hearing it stated that the portrait of a baby which was published some time ago in conjunction with the Princess of Wales was not a royal baby at all. Infant royalty had rebelled, and spoiled a good negative in which the Princess was perfect.

All these portraits are given with a truthfulness free from flattery which makes the Human face appear anything but divine.

Photographers have evidently made up their minds that it is high time to introduce some new style of portraiture to the public, and we entirely agree with them.... One thing is clear. Photographers must pull together if they want to make a definite step. This we urge upon them very earnestly, and if any suggestions come to us on the subject we will readily give them the publicity....

Photography – the best cure for a bad memory.

The wish to capture evanescent reflexions is not only impossible, as has been shown by thorough German investigation, but the mere desire alone, the will to do so, is blasphemy. God created man in His own image, and no man-made ‘machine may fix the image of God. Is it possible that God should have abandoned His eternal principles, and allowed a Frenchman in Paris to give to the world an invention of the Devil?

One picture is worth a thousand words.

The brilliancy and sharpness of some of them are highly remarkable.

The ultimate photgraphic camera will imprint a scene directly into a person's memory.

It's not the camera, but who's behind the camera.

If you can't make it better make it bigger.

The only reason to do your own processing is quality.

The camera cannot lie, but it cannot help being selective.

One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photo out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photo out of focus are a style.

When you use a camera, not as a machine but as an extension of your heart, you become one with your subject.

Don't ever forget how alien a machine over a person's face appears. A photographer must be sensitive and caring so the mechanical act of recording light images is secondary to the union of spirit with the subject.

Here, in truth, is a discovery launched upon the world, that must make a revolution in art...in what way, in what degree will art be affected by it?

I think a photography class should be a requirement in all educational programs because it makes you see the world rather than just look at it. And by seeing we also begin to understand ourselves.

Pictures always should have a special story behind it or a special meaning to the photographer.

A photograph must say: "Here is what these people are like now."

Good photographs are seen in the mind's eye before the shutter is tripped, but they are made in the darkroom. For it is the final stage of photography -in the production of negative and print- that the creative vision is realized in a picture meant to be looked at, admired, perhaps honoured.

Love for photography. Eat sleep and breathe it. Become a photograph.

Life is fun. You've got the picture to prove it.

A definition of a professional photographer: A "pro" NEVER shows anybody the mistakes.

How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that!"

Since that was your last flashbulb, shouldn't you have loaded the film before taking the picture?

A photographer from a well know national magazine was assigned to cover the fires at Yellowstone National Park. The magazine wanted to show some of the heroic work of the fire fighters as they battled the blaze. When the photographer arrived, he realized that the smoke was so thick that it would seriously impede or make it impossible for him to photograph anything from ground level. He requested permission to rent a plane and take photos from the air. His request was approved and arrangements were made. He was told to report to a nearby airport where a plane would be waiting for him. He arrived at the airport and saw a plane warming up near the gate. He jumped in with his bag and shouted, "Let's go!'' The pilot swung the little plane into the wind, and within minutes they were in the air. The photographer said, "Fly over the park and make two or three low passes so I can take some pictures." "Why?" asked the pilot. "Because I am a photographer," he responded, "and photographers take photographs." The pilot was silent for a moment; finally he stammered, "You mean you're not the flight instructor?"

I used to have a photographic memory, but it was never developed.

A photographer is like a fish, he lays thousands of eggs hoping that one will grow to maturity

Documentary is: A depiction of the real world by a photographer whose intent is to communicate something of importance - to make a comment - that will be understood by the viewer.

Photography ...a powerful weapon in awakening the social conscience.

I always considered a still camera to be the equivalent of a single shot rifle. You either get the timing right or you don't. A motor will only record the useless shots on either side of the bell jar.

..If you are just shooting the passing scene people don't care. "Grab" shots tend to look like a sneak took them. Eye contact makes all the difference in a good image. You are the exploiter - it isn't called "taking pictures" for nothing.

What is the most important element of photojournalism: Light? Moment? Composition? You are wrong. - It's magic.

A friend of mine who teaches film-making at a well-known school was approached by a noted brain surgeon who asked that he be given a two-week crash course in film-making because of a film he wanted to produce. “Okay,” my friend said, but I won’t charge you for the course if you’ll swap me a two-week course in brain surgery. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

Photography was once described as painting with light.

I enjoy photography, that's why I do it. If you are taking pictures you are not enjoying, don't take them. If you are stuck behind the camera and would rather stop taking pictures and play; go play.

A photographer strives to be fully aware of every moment and to be one with all others every moment.

Once you learn to care, you can record images with your mind or on film. There is no difference between the two.

Through photojournalism you learn that all persons are teachers.

Mass journalism has trained us to glance, and the big money photographers have made themselves masters of the craft of the quick impression. For a photographer like Lange, the problem of the viewer's glancing is especially grave. She avoids technical tricks. She seldom arranges her subjects, and when she does, she does it openly: she has the people look at the camera so that the viewer realizes they are "having their picture taken.

Only photographers know what a truly dark room or a truly windless day are.

The most important printing technique is to start with a perfect negative.

You sure got alot of nice equipment,lets see your pictures.

When I make a photograph, I make love.

Shooting stills creates a kid-like curiosity - you begin to see everyday things in new ways. It's way too much fun and should be illegal.

My camera has helped to give me insight to truth. It has helped me to understand that change is wonderful and beneficial.

A camera is a hollow tube that allows free-flowing, inward and outward expressions of love between a photographer and a subject.

What she [Dorothea Lange] wants most is to see the subject here and now in such a way as to say something about the world.

Now smile and say fromage.

Don't worry, I'll fix it in the enlarger.

In the end, better pictures always win. It's only a question of who has them.

I think that when the subject allows the photographer to accompany him/her and witness all his/her private moments, the photographer should give something in return. I see it like a contract where the photographer has to pay the price for being allowed the life of the subject.

By knowing a person, you know yourself. You become the person you photograph. You love that person as you love yourself.

You do not think of your feet when you walk. Likewise, become so accustomed to your camera that its function becomes an extension of yourself.

If you can't make a great photograph of a mundane subject, at least make a mundane photograph of a great subject!

Photographers see the world in only fractions of a second.

Tourists are terrorists with cameras. Terrorists are tourists with guns.

In photography, the biggest difference between an amateur and a professional is... the size of the wastebasket.

Kodak means photography with bother left out.

We take pictures to record our personal vision of the world.

Life is fun. You’ve got the picture to prove it.

You’ll remember a great image for the rest of your life.

In a true artist the work is the life. There are those who learn what they can do well and then do only that, but she [Dorothea Lange] could never be satisfied that she had seen all there was for her to see.

A great photo happens when a photographer sees a situation unfolding in front of them that evokes an emotion that the photographer feels deep down, in the middle of their chest. And in a split second, they then make a conscience choice of exposure, lens, depth of field, lighting, body language, composition, etc., and releases the shutter. The film is then processed, scanned, laid out on a page, printed on a press, driven across town to the newspaper carrier who throws it on some guy's porch, who then opens the newspaper and looks down at that photo … and if that guy gets the same feeling deep down in the middle of his chest that the photographer did when they viewed the situation in the first place, they have made a great photo.

Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time.

The type of camera you use for photography makes no difference. A loving, open heart makes a photograph, not a camera.

You need not photograph a thing to know it. All you need to do is spend time with your full concentration with the thing, person or emotion. On way is through photography. Another way is by opening your heart.

You must know yourself and your subject well before you can take a picture. You must become one with it.

Good negatives don't smoke, drink, or run around with other negatives.

Do not see with just your eyes. If so, you are simply turning yourself into another machine. See with your heart and not with your eyes.

I take pictures like Jimmy Page, and I play guitar like Ansel Adams.

Writers of light do it as wll; they transform shape, line, color, pattern - passionless components - into photographs that grap, delight, revulse, or inspire. Their work bestows life.

One of the best things about not having photographs [in your newspaper] is that you don't have photographers.

I remember when I was a good photographer.

The readers? We're not doing this for the readers! Who gives a $#@* about the readers?!

There is no such thing as bad photo assignments ... only bad photographers.

We're the folks that fill the empty space around the crossword.

pictures are just there to fill spaces around the adds

The only "Bad Light" is the abscence of light altogether.

On some online forum, it was announced that Contax and Domke were merging and all future products will be branded Condom.

When you blame it on the work of art or the equpiment that produced the only thing that is ever changed by it is the artist.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don''t have the film.

If a picture is worth taking it's certainly worth faking.

One...Two...Three...Photography!

When people say photography is not art what they actually mean is THEIR photography is not art.

Minolta makes the best bodies, Nikon makes the best lenses, Canon makes the best compromise.

No one makes less sense than famous photographers. It's a good thing they have chosen a visual medium, as words are not their strong suit. Has anyone ever seen a collection of quotes full of as much useless pomposity as these?

I married the model, so I still pay for the shooting....

The difference between the amateur and the professional is that the professional looks it up.

Jesus opened my eyes, as the camera opened my heart to see all of the beauty this world has to behold.

Business is business. The sooner photographers start learning about and navigating business instead of wasting time trying to control the inevitable forces at play, the better it will be for that photographer.

When people ask what equipment I use - I tell them my eyes.

Its easy to make a small fortune out of digital photography. First start with a large fortune.

Photography is one of the most universal languages around, and you do not have to say a word.

Never take photographic advice from someone who tells you that there is only one way to do something.

Good photography speaks through silence.

..the montage has to be comprehensible to the working class, in no way must they degenerate into puzzles or be so complicated as they can’t be understood.

I can't sing, I can't paint and I can't write how I feel, so all I have left is photography to express myself.

Photographs don’t lie, people do.

In the two pictures of The Wise and the Foolish Virgins it is difficult to distinguish which are the Wise and which are the Foolish, the same models being employed for, and looking equally foolish in both pictures.

Unlike a painter, a photographer starts with something finished and works backward.

If you don't take the time to look, you'll never manage to see anything.

After a few years, a photograph becomes the illusion of a moment in time.

Let your words be few, and your exposures many.

I hate photo's. They speak too much.

It's better to ask forgiveness than beg for permission.

Billy Kwan: We’ll make a great team, old man. You for the words, me for the pictures. I can be your eyes.

Bill Owens: You have no reason to develop your photos here except to annoy me. Sy Parrish: I have a reason. I personally calibrated that machine. It’s the best mini-lab in the state.

Sy Parrish: And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it’s this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.

The difference bewteen the recorder photographer... and the artist photographer... is that the artist will, by experience and learning... force the camera to paint the imagination...the emotion... the concept and the intent... rather than faithfully and truthfully reproduce an unnatractive and unflattering record.

Good better best never let it rest til your good is your better and your better is your best.

The thing itself need only exist for one two-fiftieth of a second, the time it takes to take a photograph. It is the photograph which need have the duration since it is the photograph which is printed in newspapers and magazines, sent through the post, broadcast through the air, projected onto walls––not the event itself.

Survival is important than succeed.

When photography was invented artists thought that it would bring ruin to art but it is shown that photography has been an ally of art, an educator of taste more powerful than a hundred academies of Design would have been…

Photography must soon become in fact what it is destined to be: the world’s hobby and the world’s helper – universal in usefulness and pleasure-giving.

You didn’t compromise on your camera. You shouldn’t on your lenses.

What you can see you can photograph.

Take my picture. I'm feeling beautiful tonight.

And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.

A normal man, given a group photograph of school girls and asked to point out the loveliest one, will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them.

Logicians tell us that two Negatives make an Affirmative. Will somebody say how many Negatives make a Photographer ?

A collusion exists also between all photographers present at the same situation: they look at everything except at one another.

I find the still image more powerful than the moving picture, because it leaves me alone for a moment with my thoughts.

One picture could change your life.

If the picture matters, the camera matters.

A photograph on its own can't change the world, but it can be a catalyst.

…color is like dynamite – dangerous, unless you know how to use it.

The urge to let nothing interfere with seeing, certainly is not a stranger to the zone-systemized photographer. Making and sustaining contact with subjects intuitively is an experience that is always around in photography. So photographers who assimilate the system can learn to bypass interface as readily as a snapshooter, or so it seems.

If the nude is so treated that it raises in the spectator ideas or desires appropriate to the material subject, it is false art, and bad morals.

Amateur Photographer has always held that photography is the province of all – housewives and schoolboys just as much as the man whose mind is brimming with theory, just as much as the highly paid professional. This is our way of putting that belief to the rest – in a practical way.

Photography avoids the literary or aesthetic importance of things. It is free of value judgment.

It is not many years ago that the work and name of Steichen acted upon the average photographic public as a red rag does upon the bull. How things have changed – even Mr. Steichen’s work – but his has been no step backward. The inference is plain that the photographic public has been in a measure educated. The non-photographic public, at first but slightly interested, has begun to appreciate that photography holds within itself some possibilities, though individuals still differ as to their extent. This interest is growing, and reacting upon photographers tends toward a more comprehensive understanding and appreciation, resulting in such a decided improvement in the standards of all, even in the standards of Philistine, that we feel confident that many who found no pleasure in earlier published work of Mr. Steichen will now thank us in giving them a second opportunity of viewing the work of this maturing young painter and photographer.

The thrill of photography often lies in seeing without being seen. That means acting quickly, discreetly and sensitively. For this, LEICA M6 is just right.

Facial expression is the wreath that crowns the work and distinguishes good portraiture from bad.

If pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.

When people's houses are on fire, what's the first thing they save after their pets and loved ones are saved? Their family photos

If you can see, you can also take pictures. But learning to see may take a long time.

And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it’s this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.

Upgrade your knowledge before you upgrade your camera.

Stranger: "That is beautiful child you have there."
Mother: "That's nothing. You should see his photograph."

Composite portraits are absolute quackery! What next, composite landscapes?

Photography, the universal language that transcends all cultures, all eras.

No good photograph was ever made in the middle of the day.

There is no such thing as a bad assignment, only bad photographers.

Aperture A little hole in the camera through which a wife, child, dog, cat pawing a ball of wool, wedding, swan, Norman church, father up to his neck in sand, interesting old alley, sailor sticking his head out of a porthole, or Midlands couple who were the life and soul of the party that last night in Ibiza, may be observed by the photographer.

Top ten reasons to date a photographer
1) They work well in the dark
2) They’re used to funny smells
3) They make things develop
4) They work well on many settings
5) They know how to focus
6) They can make big things look small and small things look big
7) They work well from many different angles
8 ) They zoom in and out. And in and out and in and out and in and out...
9) They shoot in many different locations
10) They can find the beauty in anything

You never see the hard days in a photo album... but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next.

The fundamental belief in the authenticity of photographs explains why photographs of people no longer living and of vanished architecture are so melancholy. Neither words nor yet the most detailed painting can evoke a moment of vanished time so powerfully and so completely as a good photograph.

When people ask me what equipment I use I tell them my eyes.

It is only when the photographer shows that he knows at once what to do under the varied circumstances with which he is surrounded, that the [client] begins to feel that confidence which allows them to nut full trust in his effort, and to bend to his desires without opposition.

Retouchers! Oh what ethical sins have you not to answer for! You compensate for all the crudities and deficiencies of nature.... To round the sharp edges of the features by the transfer of tissue from where it is not wanted to where it is needed.... To fill up the furrows dug by time.... Then enact the chiropodist upon facial excrescences. You do not believe that the man or woman exists who in his or her heart endorses the sentiment of Old Oliver Cromwell about being painted with wrinkles and warts. And you are right.

Life is like a camera. Just focus on what's important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives and if things don't work out, just take another shot.

AII artists are exhibitionists; but photographers are also voyeurs.

William Willis introduced in 1879 a photographic paper that used platinum instead of silver salts. This platinotype paper had several advantages over the papers then in use. The image was permanent. It produced an extremely beautiful tonal range; as anyone will confirm who saw the recent Frederick Evans exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. His great pictures of cathedral interiors are living examples to the beauty of the platinotype process. Cost killed the platinotype. Platinum metal increased in price by nearly three times between 1879 and 1891, and rose still higher in later years. By World War I the paper, sadly, was obsolete.

If you want to learn what someone fears losing, watch what they photograph.