A personal collection of helpful thoughts expressed by thoughtful photographers
-- and some like-minded non-photographers -- about their art.
There's nothing worse than a sharp photograph of a
fuzzy idea. -- Ansel Adams
No photographer is as good as the simplest camera. --
Edward Steichen
Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes
God made in establishing tonal relationships. -- Ansel Adams
No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep
and have a pocket full of unexposed film. -- Robert Adams
I have never taken a picture I've intended. They're
always better or worse. -- Diane Arbus
Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a
significant crop. -- Ansel Adams
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by
purchase. -- Percy W. Harris
see : See :: listen : Hear -- Bill Bascom
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live
long enough to make them all yourself. -- Fred Tonne, photojournalist
I am always mentally photographing everything as
practice. -- Minor White
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only
good photographs. -- Ansel Adams
There are no new ideas in the world. There is only new
arrangement of things. -- Henri Cartier-Bresson
Wherever there is light, one can photograph. --
Ansel Adams
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to
lug around a camera. -- Lewis Hines
It is curious that I always want to group things: a
series of sonnets, a series of photographs: whatever rationalizations
appear they originate in urges that are rarely satisfied with single
images. -- Minor White
I become a tree when I photograph a tree. -- Ruth
Bernhard
It is by great economy of means that one arrives at
simplicity of expression. -- Henri Cartier-Bresson
Ultimately, simplicity is the goal in every art, and
achieving simplicity is one of the hardest things to do. Yet it's easily
the most essential. -- Pete Turner
Keep it simple. -- Alfred
Eisenstaedt
Once you get interested in photographing it makes you
very alert to the environment around you. You see much more. -- Eliot
Porter
The negative is comparable to the composer's score, the
print to its performance -- Ansel Adams
More has been written about composition than should
have been. -- John Whiting
Compositional rules are nothing more than the
experience of others that has become accepted. To accept and follow the
rules uncritically means to accept other people's experience and not to
allow yourself to experiment. -- Gerhard Bakker
Facts are not interesting. It's a point of view on
facts which is important. -- Henri Cartier-Bresson
You can observe a lot by just looking around. --
Yogi Berra
