INSPIRING QUOTES
Here is a collection of quotes that have provided me with a lot of food for thought and have had a profound impact on my development as a photographer. I hope that they can do the same for you. First and foremost though, is the food for thought that this article by Guy Tal provides, titled “The Mindful Photographer”.
”The world has enough photographs that show us what something looks like. Show us how it feels”.
David DuChemin
”The world does not need more from you. It needs more of you."
David DuChemin
“I don't know what painting teaches me, I just know that it frees me. Frees me from the future, free from the past, free from regret, free from worry.”
Jim Carey
“What art offers is space, a certain breathing room for the spirit.”
John Updike
“A camera merely records, but an artist creates.”
Chuck Kimmerle
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau
"They who walk in another’s footsteps, never finds their own path.”
Cole Thompson
“I am not interested in seeing new things, I am interested in seeing things new.”
Ernst Haas
“There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”
Ansel Adams
“Those who do original work in any field do so because they mine themselves deeply and bring up what is personal.”
Ralph Steiner
“Creativity is not a talent, it is a work ethic”
Anonymous
“Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence”
Minor White
“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.”
Don McCullin
“It reminded me that photography is about creativity, it is about being open and agile to whatever environment and conditions you encounter. Photography is not a functional or robotic activity. The photographer needs to ‘work the environment’, generate ideas and imagine creative solutions. Photography is about vision. Your vision! I think too many photographers expect ‘Mother Nature’ to do all the work.”
Steve Coleman
”Criticism can be devastating, but praise can be even more dangerous”
Cole Thompson
“All photographs are self-portraits.”
Minor White
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens.”
Carl Jung
“A photograph does not tell ‘the’ truth, it tells ‘a’ truth.”
Cole Thompson
“… people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
Herman Melville
“When I create I try to take time to come up with ideas that tell a story, that have a reason to be created, but also that connect back to me. That reflect a part of me and that share something about me, or something that I’m going through or experiencing because those emotions and that energy help me to create an image that stands apart.”
Joel Robison
“Your work should be yours and carry with it a meaning and part of who you are to share with those that are viewing it.”
Joel Robison
”What is happening behind the camera is more important than what is happening in front of the camera.”
Les Walkling
”Look beyond the obvious. Point left when all the others point right. Embrace the unexpected. Shoot from the heart and keep an open mind. Go out when the others stay in. Don’t look with your eyes, but with your mind. Create your own style and continue to develop it.”
Ben Goossens
“Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.”
Amy Lowell
“The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.”
Charles Bukowski
“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust
“The world doesn't need another Ansel Adams. The world needs you.”
Unknown
“Every process involved in producing an artistic work should be an expression of your soul”
Steve Parish
“Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.”
Auguste Rodin
"How an image is made is not the most important thing. It´s the final image and the impact that it has on others that is more meaningful to me.”
Julieanne Kost
"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others”
Jonathan Swift
"And it was there. Deep down in my own personal abyss I found what art is to me. As a sort of therapy I started creating pictures. I stopped trying to make what I thought was “art” or “good photography” to others and made pictures just for me, because I needed to. I stopped caring about what other people might think of my work and stopped playing it safe.”
Tommy Ingberg
“The task is not so much to see what no one has seen but to think what no one has thought about that which everyone sees."
Arthur Schopenhauer
“When we look at our photographs and find not the slightest reflection of ourselves, it is a good sign that our images have lost their souls.”
David DuChemin
“Learning to see is not about having open eyes; it’s about having an open mind.”
David DuChemin
“You yourself are unique-you have ways of seeing your world that are unlike those of anyone else. So find ways to more faithfully express that, and your style will emerge.”
David DuChemin
“Vision is the beginning and end of photography. It’s the thing that moves you to pick up the camera, and it determines what you look at and what you see when you do. It determines how you shoot and why. Without vision, the photographer perishes.”
David DuChemin
“I do recall thinking early on that the detail of an Ansel Adams shot was boring to me—almost too technically perfect to be interesting. That kind of work is the goal of most landscape photographers, so the number of competing images is ridiculous, and they all end up looking like each other. I wanted to be able to enter a landscape with a different goal—that of interpretation rather than duplication.”
Frank Grisdale
"As photographers we are creative and we bring our own vision to what we see and do. We are not ‘photocopiers’; we are not there to just make a Xerox copy of what we see. I like to think that the photographer can be a ‘part’ of the photograph in the sense that the photographer contributes their own unique vision of the scene."
Steve Coleman
“Your Creative Life Purpose is to discover your voice. Your life's work is to develop it. Your life's meaning is to communicate it.”
Steve Parish
“No artist tolerates reality”
Nietzsche
“Rules do not give a damn about our creativity”
Freeman Patterson
"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun."
Mary Lou Cook