Photography Composition Quotes

...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.

The best zoom lens is your legs.

In every picture there should be shade as well as light.

To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.

If you don't have anything to say, your photographs aren't going to say much.

Forget the camera, forget the lens, forget all of that. With any four-dollar camera, you can capture the best picture.

If you have enough craft, you've done your homework and you're practiced. You can then make the photograph you desire.

The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express.

The head of the photographer is more important than his camera

I always think, 'What does this picture mean? What's the best place to put my camera? Do I have anything extra in the picture, things in the background that will distract? Am I in the basic position that will give the essential things for this picture but not too much?'

The important thing is not the camera but the eye.

I compose the frame literally with the camera. Unless it makes a story point.

I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react - click. But first, it's most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken.

Essentially, in photography, I think on two levels: one emotional and the other technical. The emotional impact has to do with looking for something dramatic happening in the photograph, something that reaches out and touches somebody in some way. And the technical is having to do with composition and framing - light and dark, light and shadow.

There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.

... I'm sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It's not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.

My theory of composition? Simple: do not release the shutter until everything in the viewfinder feels just right.

If the guy behind the camera is not good, the pictures are bad. It's still you, and it's the same lines and everything, but it doesn't work.

A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.

I just wanted to be creative, so I did photography, and that led me ultimately to music.

Bad weather makes for good photography.

My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.

I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.

Influences come from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you work on two levels: conscious and unconscious.

The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.