Jay Maisel Quotes - Page 3

It's a lot easier to take pictures if you always have the camera with you.

If you don't have a camera, the best thing you can do is describe how great it looked.

Never put lettering in your photos unless you want it read.

You have to learn not only from your failures. You must also learn from your successes.

It's not just when you shoot, or what you shot, or where you shoot, it's the combination of the three.

Sometimes as you work, you find that you are learning things about your own perceptions and motivations that are way below you consciousness. If you get lucky, you recognize what you are doing, but all too often we don't find the connection between our work and our own motivations.

You must be open to what otherwise may seem to be a detriment to your 'plans'.

A photographer's art is more in his perceptions than his execution. In a painter, I think the perception is only the first step, and then you have a kind of hard road of execution.

There are rules about perception, but not about photography.

Be aware of every square millimeter of your frame.

Keep your mind open. You may very well learn something new about yourself and your pictures.

You have to let the past successes go, or you'll never be able to see anew.

You sort of have to be always aware, even when you're not thinking of shooting. That's when the best stuff happens.

Sometimes without shooting a picture germinates in your head. Other times, you keep taking pictures of the same thing and watch the images mature and grow.

As you see something that yo want to shot and it's bearing down on you, it's important to start framing long before the subject gets close to you. The light will reveal itself possibly long before you want to take the image, but you have to wait until the picture comes to you, and if you've been anticipating carefully when the subject will be in position, the background will have been figured out in advance.

Since the background is as important as the subject, you mustn't let it default by chance. You must control not only vertical and horizontal, you must be aware of the depth of field (or lack of it) that you want in the background.

When you shoot, that is opportunity number one to make a statement. When you edit, you have opportunity number two to make your statement. It could be an affirmation of your first choice or could go off in another direction.

I don't see light as something that falls, but as a positive force.

Color is seductive. It changes as it interacts with other colors, it changes because of the light falling upon it, and it changes as it becomes larger in size.

When we are given gifts, we must be quick and able to accept them.

Each picture you take has power as long as it brings experience to the person who’s looking at it.

You need minimum color for maximum effect.

You must not think of yourself as looking at the stage from the audience. You must think of it as theatre in the round and look at it from all sides.

Always wait for the trigger. The trigger is the final part of the puzzle, the reason you want to shoot.

... there's one of the great lies of all times, that computers save time. They don't. They're time suckers. So, I'm trying not to get involved in the Photoshop.