Elliott Erwitt Quotes about Photography - Page 2

I don't like explosions. I don't mind progress. But digital photography has made every man, woman, child and chimpanzee a photographer of sorts and consequently has numbed down the general quality of photographs.

Somehow Photoshop and the ease with which one can produce an image has degraded the quality of photography in general.

I'm an amateur photographer, apart from being a professional one, and I think maybe my amateur pictures are the better ones.

It's just seeing - at least the photography I care about. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Anyone can learn how to develop. It's how you organize what you see into a picture.

The main thing is to study pictures and stop listening to the pontifictaions of photographers. Photographers aren't oracles of wisdom. If they're good photographers, then take a good look at their pictures - what else do you need?

Photography is a craft. Anyone can learn a craft with normal intelligence and application. To take it beyond the craft is something else. That's when magic comes in. And I don't know that there's any explanation for that.

Balance of light is the problem, not the amount. Balance between shadows and highlights determines where the emphasis goes in the picture...make sure the major light in a picture falls at right angles to the camera.

Ill always be an amateur photographer.

As a professional photographer I take photographs for other people to see - but I want them to see what I see. So I never assume that only a few people will appreciate what I do. At all times, the public should be able to understand what I've done, even if they don't understand how I've done it.

There's no great mystique to photography. A lot of photographers like to put their hands up to their forehead and tell you how they've suffered and so forth. Well, I just rent a car and drive to the place and take the pictures.

I wasn't imposing my presence on anyone, which is very important for a would- be journalist. I stayed back. Always let people be themselves.

I don't think you can create luck. You're either lucky or you're not. I don't know if it's really luck or if it's just curiosity. I think the main ingredient, or a main ingredient for photography is curiosity. If you're curious enough and if you get up in the morning and go out and take pictures, you're likely to be more lucky than if you just stay at home.

The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.

Something catches your eye, or your interest. You attack it in some way or observe it in some way, and try to put it in some kind of form and take a picture. It's as simple as that.

Making people laugh is one of the highest achievements you can have. And when you can make someone laugh and cry, alternatively, as Chaplin does - now that's the highest of all personal achievements. I don't know that I aim for it, but I recognize it as the supreme goal.

You must have a visual sense if you want to be a photographer. It is a very subtle thing, this visual business.

You have to devote yourself totally to be successful at it.

You don't study photography, you just do it.

Working myself into a position of total versatility, so that I can do anything I want to do at the time I want to do it. Whether I do it or not is another question.

Everybody's got to do something... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors' children and so on.

Now very often events are set up for photographers... The weddings are orchestrated about the photographers taking the picture, because if it hasn't been photographed it doesn't really exist.