Photography Mastery Quotes

It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.

I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace.

The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

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

The difference between an amateur and a professional photographer is that the amateur thinks the camera does the work. And they treat the camera with a certain amount of reverence. It is all about the kind of lens you choose, the kind of film stock you use… exactly the sort of perfection of the camera. Whereas, the professional the real professional – treats the camera with unutterable disdain. They pick up the camera and sling it aside. Because they know it’s the eye and the brain that count, not the mechanism that gets between them and the subject that counts.

It occurs to me that at the beginning one works passionately to learn photography. This takes years, and the craft is usually formed during this period. Then as time passes one finds oneself more in the role of serving the medium... Then, as in the example of several masters that I have been privileged to know personally, it appears that by having devoted oneself totally to the medium, one becomes photography.

I read the other day that Minor White said it takes twenty years to become a photographer. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. I would say, judging from myself, that it takes at least eight or nine years. But it does not take any longer than it takes to learn to play the piano or the violin. If it takes twenty years, you might as well forget about it!

There's no photo-shoot academy. If there was, I'd probably be kicked out.

The ability to make a truly artistic photograph is not acquired off-hand, but is the result of an artistic instinct coupled with years of labor.

It's the easiest thing in the world to do that, to make successful photographs. It's a bore.

It's very easy to make successful photographs - it's very easy.

I want to be the toughest photographer in the world.

I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.

That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called "Your photographs: Better."