Photography Quotes - Page 109

You cannot accurately remember color.

You have to have a lot of 'overage' so that your failures aren't the only thing you come home with. You've got to have a lot of things that were magnificent failures, but you want some magnificent successes.

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.

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.

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

Be aware of every square millimeter of your frame.

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

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.

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

When finding the right angle for a shot...'Move your ass.'

Remember that most people (those who are not photographers) don't even see the things that you missed. Many don't even look. Ergo, you are way ahead of the game.

Allow yourself to lose your way.

We have always wanted to find the 'it-ness' of anything we shoot. We want to get as deep into the subject as we can.

You will, in time, see and show others not just the superficial, but the details, the meanings, and the implications of all that you look at.

Gesture is not always action.

The more light you have in an image, the less drama you get. The details start taking over; the mystery is all gone.

The pictures are everywhere. If you're open, they will find you.

You can't just turn on when something happens, you have to be turned on all the time. Then things happen.

I am so delighted when I get to see a really good movie. In that experience the artifice of movie making, the photography or the cutting style, falls away because you are inside the movie.

One of my oldest friends from Kansas, his sister was married to Ben [Folds] and wrote lyrics on his first couple of albums. I got to meet him the first time I saw them in concert at The Bottleneck, a great bar in Lawrence, Kansas. Then, he was the musical guest my first or second week as a writer on SNL. I was like, "I don't know if you remember me?" And he was like, "Oh my god, yeah!" He's a big photography fan, as am I.

I love writing and photography and the natural world that inspires them both. I'm working on getting as lost as I can in the beauty before it is completely wiped clean by the madness of man.

Photography has clarity in the same way that language has. A word is precise, but its meaning can change based on the words around it: think tank, tank top.

When a person looks at a photograph you've taken, they will always think of themselves, their own life experience. They will relate your photograph to their memories. That interplay is where a picture comes alive and grows into something. They function like invitations.

Here’s a current example of the challenge we face. At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only thirteen people. Where did all those jobs disappear to? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?

I just directed another picture called 'American Dream' with Nick Stahl. Just finished shooting principal photography right before I started ['Lincoln'].