Today, I am going to shoot someone… and they will love me for it!
This quote reminds me of a New York taxi driver who made a photography book called Drive-by Shootings.
I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.
A simple quote from Gilles Peress who has covered The Troubles in Northern Ireland for years. “Whatever you say, say nothing” is his book on The North.
We see in colour all the time. Black and white is therefore immediately an interpretation of the world, rather than a copy.
This is brilliant from Kenna, he sees colour photography as a direct copy of life where as black and white is a more surreal and abstract way of looking at things.
The eye should learn to listen before it looks.
I like this quote form Robert Frank and what I think it means is that you should observe a seen and watch and listen to what people are saying and doing before you start taking pictures.
Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the photo is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks.
What he means here is that Bresson was only interested in the process of taking pictures and not so much into the technical part of photography. I also believe that Bresson didn’t do his own printing.
by AlainB (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Contrast is what makes photography interesting.
A very simple quote here and my take on this is vary your stories, your subjects and try to make things as interesting as you can.
Once photography enters your bloodstream, it is like a disease.
I remember seeing a book by Don McCullin called the Destructive Business and I got hooked straight away. It was a bit like heroin for the eye, just couldn’t get enough of it.
After following the crowd for a while, I’d then go 180 degrees in the exact opposite direction. It always worked for me.
What I believe this quote from Erwitt means, is constantly retrace your steps find and different things that you didn’t find the first time. Constantly go back to the place you photograph before.
by Alfred Weidinger (CC BY 2.0)
One Response
The Michael Kenna quote, about colour being an accurate representation of what we see and black and white being more abstract, makes sense. It’s strange because colour photography is newer: you’d kinda expect the accurate representation to come first and the abstraction to come later.