When you want to photograph in "the street," get close. Get wide angle. Don't think. When what you see is interesting to you, raise the camera quickly and shoot. Don't let yourself filter the scene through yourself, or through what you think will make a good photograph or not. Just push the button. Be close. Be wide angle. Don't make eye contact unless someone else does. Then just smile and nod. If they ask, "Did you take my picture?", say "I don't think so.", and move on. Don't think. Just look, and push the button when you're interested. Delete the photographs you don't like. Digital costs nothing. Push the button a lot. Be close. Be wide angle. Don't think. Photographs are not intellectual. They don't tell a story. They are visual, and a language unto themselves. They exist for their own reason. Don't think. Push the button. - Bill.
The Print
There are photographers who still believe that a photograph does not exist until it is a print. There remains in their memory the experience of working in a darkroom and recalling the magic of seeing an image gradually appear on a piece of paper in a tray of liquid, all this bathed in a warm golden light.
If processed and stored properly this print can last for generations. It becomes archival; it becomes vintage. It becomes a treasure to be put in a fine box between soft acid-free tissues. It can be framed and hung in a favorite spot, to become an object of daily pleasure and comfort. It is a real object we can hold in our hands, not a negative or an image floating around in space and stored in cold machines.
Whether captured on film or captured digitally, this print, this object, reflects the craft and skill and pride of its maker. Its quality is a reflection of the skill and art of its making.
Let us sign it with our name as an expression of pride and accomplishment – whether we have made it ourselves or have entrusted its making to a skilled artisan. Let us be collectors and guardians of these beautiful artifacts.
Let us sign it with our name as an expression of pride and accomplishment – whether we have made it ourselves or have entrusted its making to a skilled artisan. Let us be collectors and guardians of these beautiful artifacts.
Let us celebrate the print. - Constantine Manos.
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” - Alfred Stieglitz
"I'll tell you what a photograph is. It's the illusion of a literal description of how a camera saw a piece of time and space." - Garry Winogrand
“If your photos aren’t good enough, then you’re not close enough” – Robert Capa
“Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good” – Garry Winogrand
“Since I’m inarticulate, I express myself with images.”- Helen Levitt
"It's about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy"
- Elliott Erwitt
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt“I suspect it is for one’s self-interest that one looks at one’s surroundings and one’s self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs.” – Lee Friedlander
“There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”- Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph” – Andre Kertesz
“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”
-Diane Arbus
-Diane Arbus
“My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.”
-Steve McCurry
-Steve McCurry
“The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That is what has always excited me about photography.”
-Richard Kalvar
-Richard Kalvar
“I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.”
-Garry Winograd
-Garry Winograd
“You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.”
-Joel Meyerowitz
-Joel Meyerowitz
“All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.”
-Elliott Erwitt
-Elliott Erwitt
“Which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
-Imogen Cunningham
-Imogen Cunningham
“Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.”
-Bruno Barbey
-Bruno Barbey
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
-Henri Cartier-Bresson
-Henri Cartier-Bresson
