Edward Weston
Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.
I see no reason for recording the obvious.
Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.
I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without.
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.
Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.
There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.
When a photographer masters the tools and processes of the art, then the quality of the work is only limited by his creative vision.Collection: Art
Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.Collection: Way
Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.Collection: Photography
The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.Collection: Photography
This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.Collection: Photography
Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.Collection: Photography
If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.Collection: Photography
Dare to be irrational! - keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.Collection: Courage
Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?Collection: Eye
The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?Collection: Photography
I would say to any artist: Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.Collection: Artist
For photography is a way to capture the moment - not just any moment, but the important one, this one moment out of all time when your subject is revealed to the fullest - that moment of perfection which comes once and is not repeated.Collection: Photography
I always work better when I do not reason, when no question of right or wrong enter in,-when my pulse quickens to the form before me without hesitation nor calculation.Collection: Pulse
To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.Collection: Photography
The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.Collection: Photography
A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one's own faults without bothering about others.Collection: Faults
Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.Collection: Photography
The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically — that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.Collection: Important
Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.Collection: Photography
My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.Collection: Photography
I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.Collection: Theory
I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty. Here was every sensuous curve of the human figure divine but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.Collection: Home
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea, even switch me to different subject matter. So I start out with my mind as free from image as the silver film on which I am to record, and I hope as sensitive.Collection: Eye
My work is never intellectual. I never make a negative unless emotionally moved by my subject.Collection: Intellectual
Photography, not soft gutless painting, is best equipped to bore into the spirit of today.Collection: Photography
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.Collection: Photography
When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.Collection: Photography
It's hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.Collection: Artist
For the obvious reason that nature - unadulterated and unimproved by man - is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement.Collection: Men
A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.Collection: Looks
People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.Collection: Photography
I find myself every so often looking at my ground glass as though the unrecorded image might escape me!Collection: Glasses
Restricting too personal, and therefore prejudiced, interpretation leads to revolution - the fusion of an inner and outer reality derived from the wholeness of life - sublimating things seen into things known.Collection: Reality
Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.Collection: Way
Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed.Collection: Photography
"Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed "artists"."Collection: Photography
Modern Art is being used to index me. Surely it was a source but photographers have influenced Modern Art quite as deeply as they have been influenced, maybe more. Anyway painters don't have a copyright on M. A. We were all born in the same upheaval.Collection: Art
I don't care if you make a print on a bath mat, just as long as it is a good print.Collection: Long
Art is based on order. The world is full of 'sloppy Bohemians' and their work betrays them.Collection: Art
Now one does not think during creative work: any more than one thinks when driving a car. One has a background of years — learning — unlearning— success — failure — dreaming — thinking — experience — back it goes — farther back than one's ancestors: all this, — then the moment of creation, the focussing of all into the moment. So I can make — "without thought" — fifteen carefully-considered negatives one every fifteen minutes, — given material with as many possibilities.Collection: Dream
An excellent conception can be quite obscured by faulty technical execution or clarified by faultless technique.Collection: Technique