Technically I feel total fluidity in writing. I feel there's nothing technically that I can't do the way a certain sort of pianist feels that. But that doesn't mean it comes easily. It doesn't.
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.
Submitting is always the most important thing to me. Victory first, but with a submission is what I always want.
I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term - meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
One does not play the piano with one's fingers: one plays the piano with one's mind.
The bottom line is about the technique. The little things. Fine-tuning what we have to do. No matter who is out there, maybe theyre not going to be as good, quote-unquote, as the starters may be, but the bottom line for us is to make sure were doing the right things.
Whenever I start to really think about what I'm playing, I may play it better musically, but the feeling isn't there.
I have always stood in awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.
Lenny Breau is one of the true geniuses of the guitar. I suppose he is a musician's musician. His knowledge of the instrument and the music is so vast, and I think that's what knocks people out about him. But he's such a tasty player too. I think if Chopin had played guitar, he would have sounded like Lenny Breau.
The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of one's own, in one's relation to the tool, the material and the colors.
It is all about technique. The great mistake of this century is to put inspiration and creativity first.
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.
Anytime you spar at a new dojo, whether it's in Japan, Brazil, or Thailand, the fighters come after the new guy. It's a way to test yourself against the best and to sharpen your technical skills and push yourself to be the best you can be.
I gave up on the idea of making art a long time ago, because I wanted to know how to make paintings; but once I came to know that, reconsidering the question of what art is returned as a critical issue.
My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work; to leave no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my expression and the observer. To seek freedom through significant form and design rather than through the diversion of so-called free and accidental brush handling.
By the time I got to the Paris Conservatoire I was very good at the scales and arpeggios.
With every album, I write above my ability, and my job as a guitarist is to catch up and be able to play it live. The thing about practicing is that once you master something, you don't have to remaster it. You just keep moving forward.
Photography isolates the world via an aperture and gives the photographer the means to see differently, to achieve a spontaneous vision that is direct and uncompromising.
What I got, unconsciously, from admiring Fred Astaire was that he didn't want what he was doing to look difficult. What was difficult, in my opinion, was making it look so genuine, so effortless. I equally have tried to remain unseen on the screen.
It's a choice - there are two different sorts of photographer: those obsessed with the technicalities and those obsessed by the subject.
You should diligently play scales and fingerpractices. There are many, however, who believe they'll achieve all, by practicing daily on technique for hours on end, up till high age. It's like practicing every day to enumerate the alfabet faster and faster. One would think one could make better use of their valuable time.
I am a very technical guy. I'm proud of my technique, my fluidity, and my skill; that's what I work on every day. I try to out-technique guys.
I believe that the medium of photography prevails entirely as an act of faith in the souls of those who love and practice it. And so every photograph becomes another subtle variation on the theme of the medium itself.
Cinema is still a very young art form with extraordinary techniques and very impressive special effects but sometimes it seems the soul has been taken out of things.
The thing that separates a so-so director and a great director is a love and caring for film.
