camera quotes

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

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."

None. They should just go out and photograph and stop talking about it. That’s the only way they are going to find themselves. They can’t do it in their heads – they have to go out and do it in the camera and get it on film.

I was extravagant in the matter of cameras – anything photographic – I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest – or without.

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

Camera batteries never die when you're in the camera store.

The whole thrust in my life right now is spinning my assignments around and making them work in a more personal way (...) I wanted to go back and do the original thing: one camera, one lens, one film. You really have to put yourself in a position of danger to be creative.

When someone sees me with a camera that weights almost ten pounds, he assumes immediately that I’m a serious photographer.

Having and camera makes you no more a photographer than having a hammer and some nails makes you a carpenter.

I was given a small camera as a wedding gift from a very dear friend. My first pictures were taken on my honeymoon. As soon as I became familiar with the camera, I was intrigued with the possibilities of expression it offered. It was like a discovery for me.

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.

No matter what camera you use, it is not the camera but your artistic eyes who makes the photograph.

(...) Along with people who pretty themselves for the camera, the unattractive and the disaffected have been assigned their beauty.

It is not reality that photographs make immediately accessible, but images. For example, now all adults can know exactly how they and their parents and grandparents looked as children – a knowledge not available to anyone before the invention of cameras, not even to that tine minority among whom it was customary to commission paintings of their children. Most of these portraits were less informative than any snapshot. And even the very wealthy usually owned just one portrait of themselves or any of their forebears as children, that is, image of one moment of childhood, whereas it is common to have many photographs of oneself, the camera offering the possibility of possessing a complete record, at all ages.

The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will; but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.

I believe that the chief value of photography as a means of communication depends entirely on the ability of the camera to arrest life instantly. It thrills me to speculate how the invention of photography has contributed to the speeding up of human reflexes. The rapidly working camera has sharpened man’s capacity to observe and observe rapidly; it has taught many of us to use our minds to classify visual phenomena in an instant of time; to relate our own attitude to that of the person in front of the camera in a split second. This to my mind is the essence of photojournalism.

To live, to experience the world, to communicate with a camera, all these are interrelated and cannot be separated from everyday live.

What is a good photograph? I cannot say. A photograph is tied to the time, what is good today may be a cliché tomorrow. The problem of the photographer is to discover his own language, a visual ABC. The picture represents the feelings and point of view of the intelligence behind the camera. This disease of our age is boredom and a good photographer must combat it. The way to do this is by invention – by surprise. When I say a good picture has surprise value I mean that it stimulates my thinking and intrigues me. The best way to achieve surprise quality is by avoiding clichés. Imitation is the greatest danger of the young photographer.

Photographers learn to interpret photographs in that technical way because they want to understand and use that ‘language’ themselves (just as musicians learn a more technical musical language than the layman needs). Social scientists who want to work with visual materials will have to learn to approach them in this more studious and time-consuming way.

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

The camera captures light, our minds capture images.

There is 3 key things for good photography: the camera,lighting and... photoshop

If the picture matters, the camera matters.

No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want.

The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE.

Photography is never more strong in its emotional appeal or in the authority of its statement than when recording incidents in the life of man or man’s reaction to the life around him. Here is one province where it can be said with some certainty that the camera does not lie. It cannot afford to try.

The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.

A camera can get you close without the burden of commitment. It's a nifty device that way, a magical passport into people's lives with no permanent strings attached.

To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practised in its name.

For me, photography is a virtue, a charity if done to value the people around.

It’s not when you press the shutter, but why you press the shutter.