Edward Weston Quotes

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

When a photographer masters the tools and processes of the art, then the quality of the work is only limited by his creative vision.

Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.

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.

Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.

Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.

Dare to be irrational! - keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.

If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

I would say to any artist: Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.

I always work better when I do not reason, when no question of right or wrong enter in,-when my pulse quickens to the form before me without hesitation nor calculation.

For photography is a way to capture the moment - not just any moment, but the important one, this one moment out of all time when your subject is revealed to the fullest - that moment of perfection which comes once and is not repeated.

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.

I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.

A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one's own faults without bothering about others.

Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.

The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically — that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.

As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

Now one does not think during creative work: any more than one thinks when driving a car. One has a background of years — learning — unlearning— success — failure — dreaming — thinking — experience — back it goes — farther back than one's ancestors: all this, — then the moment of creation, the focussing of all into the moment. So I can make — "without thought" — fifteen carefully-considered negatives one every fifteen minutes, — given material with as many possibilities.

The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise.