Ultimately, my hope is to amaze myself. The anticipation of discovering new possibilities becomes my greatest joy.

Jerry Uelsmann

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is...the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.

Richard Avedon  
15/05/1923 - 02/10/2004

The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn't what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organized visual lying.

Terence Donovan

Color is very much about atmosphere and emotion and the feel of a place.

When gifts are given to me through my camera, I accept them graciously.

Minor White

I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?

"We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory."

"A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective"

"Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography"

" A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words"

"In order to educate man to a new longing, everyday familiar objects must be shown to him with totally unexpected perspectives and in unexpected situations. New objects should be depicted from different sides in order to provide a complete impression of the object."

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.

"So now almost everyone owns a camera. Yet, of all the commonplace tools available to us, the SLR camera is propably the least understood and certainly the most under-exploited.

All too frequently the average amateur will purchase a fine modern camera and proceed to use it for making the most elementary simple snapshots. This surely is like playing 'Chopsticks' on a concert grand piano"

Sam Haskins

"If you want to make good photographs, a camera has to be second nature to you. Devoting too much attention to technical decisions can interfere with your creative processes"

"Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness"

"Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk"

"I used to have this notion when I was a kid that the minute you said anything, it was no longer true. Of course it would have driven me crazy very rapidly if I hadn't dropped it, but there's something similar in what I'm trying to say. That once it's been done, you want to go someplace else. There's just some sense of straining."

"The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told."

"Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world"

"Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees"

"I cannot solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art"

"36 satisfactory exposures on a roll means a photographer is not trying anything new"

"I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways."

" There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are"

"Chance is always there. We all use it. The difference is a poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time"

"My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain"

"Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare... photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved"

"In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated"

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

"Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts."

"It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter"