Photographic Skill Quotes

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

However spontaneous I hope a photograph will look, I always put a lot of thought into how I can make it happen. The very best pictures are the most relaxed, so a lot of fussing around technically can completely break the spell, and everyone freezes up with nerves.

The precision of hisskill places his work beyond the tentative and the experimental stage. He is continually searching and exploring both himself and his surroundings. and in this exploration of the realm of places, people and things, contrasts and relationships, Callahan is no respecter of conventional technical formula or code. His delicate sense of pattern is an integral part of his photography and not a thing by itself.

The herculean task of a photographer is to capture a momentary frame as beautiful in reality, as it would be in a dream.

Great portrait photographers are great mythologists.

Most people if I like their music, I can get good pictures.

Whatever it takes to get the image to reach that level is what that photographer needs to do.

I don't see the point of photographing trees or rocks because they're there and anyone can photograph them if they're prepared to hang around and wait for the light.

Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.

I think that the photographer must completely control his picture and bring to it all his personality, and in this area most photographs never transcend being just snapshots. When a great photographer does infuse the snapshot with his personality and vision, it can be transformed into something truly moving and beautiful.

To make good photographs, to express something, to contribute something to the world he lives in, and to contribute something to the art of photography besides imitations of the best photographers on the market today, that is basic training, the understanding of self.

Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.

Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.

It's pretty amazing to see a guy, while steering at the wheel, suddenly raise his little 300 dollar German camera with one hand and snap something that's on the move in front of him, and through an unwashed windshield at that. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958)

The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.

To make the essence of man visible in the exposure is the highest art of photography.

Most people stiffen with self-consciousness when they pose for a photograph. Lighting and fine camera equipment are useless if the photographer cannot make them drop the mask, at least for a moment, so he can capture on his film their real, undistorted personality and character.

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.

Like most photographers, I try to capture a moment in my work.

I probably get a deeper satisfaction of having taken a very good photograph than of having written something very good, a very good story. Maybe it's because the element of magic is so present in a good photograph - luck and magic, but also hard work and being ready and all that.

Each photographer has their own vibe and presence that they bring to their shoots. Steven Meisel is a teacher. He teaches everyone on set something about their craft. He has an amazing way to bring out everyone's best in themselves.

Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.

It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.

I've never put myself in the mindset that I'm actually any good at taking pictures, I just love to shoot things that catch my eye, whether it's landscapes or just my kids.

Some guys can run fast, some guys can sing, I found I could take photographs that people were interested in.