Freeman Patterson Quotes

There's only one rule in photography - never develop colour film in chicken noodle soup.

If you do not see what is around you every day, what will you see when you go to Tangiers?

The camera points both ways. In expressing the subject you also express yourself.

A photographer who wants to see....must recognize the value of the familiar. Your ability to see is not increased by the distance you put between yourself and your home. If you do not see what is all around you every day, what will you see when you go to Tangiers?....Good seeing doesn't ensure good photographs, but good photographic expression is impossible without it.

A photographer who wants to see, a photographer who wants to make fine images, must recognize the value in the familiar.

Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, your intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering the remarkable world around you.

Creation and creativity are inextricably linked.

The ability of human beings to be creative depends fundamentally on the health and well-being of our biosphere, the few kilometres of air, water, and soil that surround our planet like the skin of an apple. Quite simply, they are the physical and spiritual bases of our lives, and the only source of materials and tools.

No amount of technical knowledge and competence is, of itself, sufficient to make a craftperson into an artist. That requires caring - passionate caring about ultimate things.

The abstracting of visual elements in order to recognize their particularity has become automatic, but seeing, combining, and creating them as integrated 'wholes' will remain a lifelong challenge.

Every artist is, first of all, a craftperson thoroughly knowledgeable about the materials, tools, and techniques of his or her particular medium and skilled in using many of them.

There is a close connection between art and religion in the sense that both are concerned about questions of meaning - if not about the meaning of existence generally, then certainly about the meaning of one's individual life and how a person relates to his or her total community/environment.

Thirty-six satisfactory exposures on a roll means a photographer is not trying anything new

Not every work of art is or need be a heavily profound statement.

Consciously and unconsciously, an artist engaged in serious work is always raising or dealing with the question, 'What really matters?'

I photograph Nature, which includes human beings.

It seems to me that the whole purpose of the workshops is really twofold. One - to help people make better pictures, and two - to unleash their creativity to the fullest amount that they possibly can.

Unlike a child in a totally urban environment, my friends and peer group were not only other children, but also wild and domesticated animals, plants of every sort, brooks and waterfalls, rocks and sand.