DAILY BLOG

"It's surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth."

~ Sir David Attenborough

“We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.”

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

“I try to be aware of light at all times. I’m always watching for it. I am not looking at light because I am a photographer. I am a photographer because I am deeply involved with light”

~ Ruth Bernhard

“I believe in and make no apologies for photography. It is the most important graphic medium of our time. It does not have to be -indeed cannot be compared to painting. It has different means and aims”

~ Edward Weston

"I can’t stress enough how important observation is as the foundational component of being a photographer. It is all about noticing things; light, texture, form, the confluence of these elements within infinite combinations. Essentially my passion for landscape photography came through being a person who is a certain type of observant as well as someone who has always felt at peace and tremendously as ease out in nature."

~ Jeffrey Conley

“My work begins with recording an image, but it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph. A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph, a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique and of course information. It is the information that grabs the viewer but it is the photographers’s art that holds them."

~ George Zimbel

“I am a visually upbeat person. I see things that are “up” and it gets me interested"

~ George Zimbel

“There’s nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.”

~ Dame Vivienne Westwood
(1941–2022)

“I grew up not wanting to grow up. Growing up seemed terrible. To me it was awful. Children were free and sane and grown ups were hideous”

~ Mary Quant
(1930-2023)

“It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place with the right talents. In recent fashion there are three. Chanel, Dior and Mary Quant”

~ Ernestine Carter

“At 16 I was a funny, skinny little thing, all eyelashes and legs. And then suddenly people told me I was gorgeous. I thought they had gone mad”

~ Twiggy

"My love of photography is deep. I'm in it forever..”

~ Cig Harvey

“At Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, I found Einstein, a simple, kindly almost childlike man, too great for any of the posturing of eminence. One did not have to understand his science to feel the power of his mind or the force of his personality. He spoke sadly, yet sincerely as one who had looked into the universe, far past mankind’s small affairs. When I asked him what the world would be like were another atomic bomb to be dropped, he replied wearily “Alas we will no longer be able to hear the music of Mozart”.

~ Yousuf Karsh

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning”

~ Albert Einstein

“There were about 100 people who ran the 1960’s in England and I was fortunate enough to meet, work with and/or photograph virtually all of them”

~ Robert Whitaker

“Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow”

~ John Lennon

"Mother's love, that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it."

~ Louisa May Alcott

“But oh, San Francisco! It is and has everything. The wonderful sunlight there, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at your shoes. Beautiful Chinatown .. Every race in the world. The sardine fleets sailing out. The little cable cars whizzing down the city hills”

~ Dylan Thomas
(Poet, Writer)
1914 - 1953

"It’s difficult to get there, but once you manage to find your own voice it gets somewhat easier, because you know what you want to see in your images."

 

~ Noell Oszvald

"I see these hand treated palm sized prints as a continuation of not only that adoration, but as a collection of moments. Moments that one may overlook but I want to make them feel big and significant. And things, physical or otherwise, do not have to be vast or demonstrative to have great meaning and relevance."

 

-Ernesto Esquer

“The world makes up my pictures not me"

~ Lee Friedlander

“In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach towards more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it. Their work betrays a sympathy - a trust, an affection - for the imperfections and frailties of society. They like the real world in spite of it’s terrors as the source of all wonder and fascination and value-no less precious for being irrational ."

~ John Szarkowski

“I am possessed by Photography”

~ Bernard Plossu

“Richard Diebenkorn’s fame as a painter continues to grow. Here he’s in his Oakland studio, but I first knew him in Sausalito, where a group of artists would sit around with a jug of Gallo’s Heavy Burgundy and moan about how badly they were treated. Diebenkorn, always the lanky kid in the corner of that group, never joined in on the complaining. A burning cigarette was his constant companion in almost every shot I ever made of him”

~ Fred Lyon

“I don’t go into the studio with the idea of “saying” something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue”

~ Richard Diebenkorn

“I saw the small old woman coming towards us down the sidewalk. I was intrigued and wanted to catch her passing Neil. The mistake to me was that I had in my haste focused the lens just past the two figures closer to the fence than to Neil’s face.That was the original reason why I made a small sized print and solarized it to help with the apparent sharpness.. But the solarization in this case added a somewhat spooky dimension to the image, which Neil took to immediately”

~ Joel Bernstein

“When you’re young, you don’t have any experience-you are charged up but you’re out of control. And if you’re old and you’re not charged up, then all you have are memories. But if you’re charged and stimulated by what’s going on around you and you also have experience, you know what to appreciate and what to pass by”

~ Neil Young

“Men photograph a female nude as if she belonged to them. I photograph a woman as part of the universe”

 

~ Ruth Bernhard

“In photography, we don’t capture time, we evoke it. It flows like fine sand, endless. We don’t take a photograph, we “see” it, then we share it with others. I practice photography to be on one level with the world and what is happening”

 

~ Bernard Plossu

“I never question what to do. It tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help”

 

~ Ruth Bernhard
(1905-2006)

I think this is one of the most expressive jazz images I've ever made. Of course, I didn't make it, I just captured it.

 

~ Fred Lyon
(1924-2022)

“I decided to photograph her as another friend had described her
“Georgia, her pure profile calm, clearer sleek black hair drawn swiftly back into a tight knot at the nape of her necktie strong white hands, touching and lifting everything, even the boiled eggs, as if they were living things-sensitive slow moving hands, coming out of the black and white, always this black and white".

 

~ Yousuf Karsh
(1908-2002)

“It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve. To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.”

 

~ Georgia O’Keefe
(1887-1986)

"I would strongly encourage anybody embarking in photography as a career to embrace and enjoy the whole process. Being a photographer can be a wonderful way to experience the world."

 

~ Michael Kenna

“You don’t take a photo, the photo gives itself to you”

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

“The mark of a successful individual is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it.”

 

~ Chinese Proverb

“A picture is like a prayer”

 

~ Harry Callahan
(1912-1999)

"One day in a second-hand shop near Covent Garden, I found a 70 year old wooden Kodak. I was delighted. Like nineteenth-century cameras it had no shutter, and the wide-angle lens, with an aperture as minute as a pin-hole, was focused on infinity. In 1926, Edward Weston wrote in his diary “The camera sees more than the eyes, so why not make use of it”. My new camera saw more and saw it differently. It created a great illusion of space, an unrealistically steep perspective and it distorted. When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed."

~ Bill Brandt
(1904-1983)

“Always carry a camera, it's tough to shoot a picture without one”

~ Jay Maisel

“It’s the subject matter that counts. I’m interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can’t always see”

 

~ Harry Callahan

“The maestro’s villa was a photographer’s nightmare, with his boisterous children bicycling through vast rooms already crowded with canvases. I eagerly accepted Picasso’s alternate suggestion to meet later in Vallauris at his ceramics gallery. “He will never be here” the gallery owner commented, when my assistant and two hundred pounds of equipment arrived. “He says the same thing to every photographer”. To everyone’s amazement the “old lion” not only kept his appointment with me but was prompt and wore a new shirt. He could partially view himself in my large format lens and intuitively moved to complete the composition”

 

~ Yousuf Karsh
(1908-2002)

“For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography”

~ Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973)

“I have spent my lifetime taking photographs. The photograph fulfills my deep need to stop things from disappearing. It makes transience less painful and retains some of the special magic which I have looked for and found. I have tried to create order out of chaos, to find stability in flux and beauty in the most unlikely places”

~ Dorothy Bohm

“My work begins with recording an image, but it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph. A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph, a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique and of course, information. It is the information that gets the viewer, but it is the photographer’s art that holds them."

~ George Zimbel

“The Sonoran Desert bloom is a magical time for us in this area. Thanks to the winter rains, brown and arid is replaced with a magnificent array of colors, with flowers popping up seemingly overnight. Cactus flowers in particular are the greatest gift. After hibernating and saving up their energy during the cold months, the mother cactus plant releases a display of hues and tones that one would think come from another world. This hand colored print serves as tribute to all the colors of prickly pear cactus you see around the desert during this blooming period.”

“You can’t get away from the element of luck in sports photography, but what makes a great sports photographer is that when we get lucky we don’t miss it”

 

~Neil Leifer

“Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If a man or a woman wishes to express themselves photographically, they must understand surely to a certain extent, their relationship to life. I am interested in relating the problems that affect me to some set of values that I am trying to discover and establish as being my life. I want to discover them through photography”

~ Harry Callahan

“If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

 

~ Eve Arnold

“I am very fond of this image and it has qualities of the mystical and the universal with connotations of both the astronomical and also the molecular which I find satisfying. The scale is very ambiguous to most viewers and I enjoy presenting that kind of puzzle as it leaves space for many more different kinds of interpretations."

 

~ Don Worth

“If you choose your subject selectively, intuitively, the camera can write poetry.”

 

~ Harry Callahan

“The eternal is a moment that breathes and contains life, the span of one breath”

~ Edouard Boubat

“Horst takes the inert clay of human flesh and models it into the decorative shapes of his own devising. Every gesture of his models is planned, every line controlled and coordinated to the whole of the picture. Some gestures look natural and careless because they are carefully rehearsed. The others, like Voltaire’s god were invented by the artist because they did not exist”

~ Mehemed Agha
(1929-1978)
Art Director - American Vogue

“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”

~ Michelle Obama

“Photography is a potential depiction expressed in seamlessly merging tonal values and brought about or conveyed by the effects of light”

~ Heinrich Kuhn

“The older I get the one thing I can trust in myself more than anything else is the way I feel about something. When I photograph, I try to be as aware of my feelings as I can be to somehow try and get them out of me and onto the film in terms of the way I am responding or seeing the world”

~ Judy Dater

“Eleanor was innocent and I was innocent.
I just try to photograph what I like. I thought she was beautiful. I intuitively photographed her. All my photography is innocent”

~ Harry Callahan

“Both Huene and I had this extraordinary feeling about Greece. The physical beauty of the men and women, the sun and the fresh air and the sea”

~ Horst P. Horst

“Today people talk a lot about “reading” a photograph. That means getting it, understanding what it’s all about. But man, when it comes to Herman Leonard, I think a better word is “listen”. You need to “listen” to Herman's pictures. They are full of music and you can hear it”

~ Quincy Jones
(Quoted in the book “Listen: Herman Leonard and his World of Jazz”- 21st Editions)

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”

 

~ Susan Sontag

“I am in agreement with John Szarkowski. A photograph is both a window and a mirror. We look through the window and see, connect and collaborate with the subject matter in front of us. We also use this same external reality as a mirror which reflects our individual proclivities, genetics, experiences, thoughts and desires.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“He put a little bit of himself into every picture. He was humble, very quiet, very kind. It was as if he didn’t understand or couldn’t connect to the fact that he held a major place in fashion history and photographic history”

 

~ Carol Alt
(Model)

“For some people the word “elegance” has acquired objectionable, snobbish connotations. But I myself prefer to regard elegance as an attractive and admirable - if admittedly rare - human attribute: a form of physical and mental grace that has nothing to do with pretension or over refinement or an excess of money to spend. Unlike Huene, who had absorbed an infallible sense of elegance from his upbringing, I had to invent it on my own: more exactly, to learn gradually to recognize elegance in others and try to portray it in my photographs.”

~ Horst P Horst

“There is something instinctive about the moment you choose to “take” a photograph. It’s not the result of thought or reflection.The strength of the composition is always born of the instinct of the decision. It reminds me of archery. There is the tension of the bow and the free flight of the arrow”

~ Edouard Boubat
(1923 - 1999)

“If I knew how to take a good photograph, I’d do it every time”

~ Robert Doisneau
1912-1994

“I always felt the difference between New York and Paris is that Paris nourishes you by the fact that it is very beautiful.You see living history all around you. The whole flavor of the place is one of harmony and beauty. It raises the human spirit"

 

~ Louis Stettner

“Most of my photographs were taken in the spur of the moment, very quickly, just as they occurred. All attention focuses on the specific instant, almost too good to be true, which can only vanish in the following one”

 

~ Willy Ronis

“There are days when the technique of an aimless stroll or destination works like a charm, flushing out pictures from the non stop urban spectacle"

 

~ Robert Doisneau

“The camera for an artist is just another tool. It is no more mechanical than a violin if you analyze it. Beyond the rudiments, it is up to the artist to create art, not the camera.”

 

~ Brett Weston
(1911-1993)

“Today music is visual”

~ Archie Shepp

“Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling”

~ Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

"When you're observant, inspiration can show up in the most unusual places, triggering a new idea to appear.”

~ Noell Oszvald

“New York is a city I love, a city that forgives nothing but accepts everyone - a place of a thousand varied moods and visions, of countless faces in a moving crowd, each one silently talking to you”

 

~ Louis Stettner

“Brassai showed me that it was possible to find something significant in photographing subjects in everyday life doing ordinary things by interpreting them in your own way and with your own personal vision"

 

~ Louis Stettner

"Everything I know, see or hear, every part of my life is transformed into dresses."

~ Christian Dior

“In life’s saddest winter moments, when you’ve been under a cloud for weeks, suddenly a glimpse of something wonderful can change the whole complexion of things, your entire feeling.The kind of photography I like to do, capturing the moment, it is very much like that break in the clouds. In a flash, a wonderful picture seems to come out of nowhere”

 

~ Elliott Erwitt

“A photograph should always have the last word. Surrounded by silence, it should by its presence dominate all those who look at it. Even the photographer should keep quiet. The picture is taken, their work is done.”

~ Louis Stettner
1922-2016

"Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!"

~ from 'The Windmills of your Mind' (1968)
First recorded by Noel Harrison
Lyrics written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman
with music composed by Michel Legrand

"I like taking photographs because I like life. And I like photographing people best of all because most of all I love humanity."

~ Horst P. Horst

"It’s not about a moment, it’s about a moment made."

 

~ Kurt Markus
(1947 - 2022)

"Real elegance is everywhere, especially in things that don't show it"

~ Christian Dior

“I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you,
My heart moves from cold to fire.
I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you, bend to you,
and the measure of my changing love for you,
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume my heart with its cruel ray,
stealing my key to true calm.
In this part of the story I am the one who dies,
The only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.”

~ Pablo Neruda
(Sonnet LXVI: I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You)

“Pictures have to do with heart and mind and eye and they have to communicate and as long as they do that it’s valid”

 

~ Elliott Erwitt

“My interest in photography has something to do with the aesthetic and that there should be a little beauty in everything”

 

Imogen Cunningham
(1883-1976)

“The key to artistic photography is to work out your own thoughts, by yourself. Imitation leads to certain disaster. New ideas are always antagonized. Do not mind that. If a thing is good it will survive”

 

~ Gertrude Käsebier
(1853-1934)

“The real night people live at night not out of necessity, but because they they want to. They belong to the world of pleasure and love, a secret suspicious world closed to the uninitiated"

 

Brassaï
(1899-1984)

“I like to get to know trees intimately. I spend a lot of time walking around them trying to become acquainted with them. In fact, it’s as though I talk to them.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“I soon understood that I could get closer to the feel of things by taking pictures.”

 

~ Charles Harbutt
1935-2015

“Dogs have more to do than children. For one thing, they are focused to lead a life that is really schizoid. Every minute, they have to be on two planes at once, juggling the dog world against the human world. And they’re always on call. Their owners want instant affection everyday, any time of day. A dog can never say that he has other things to do. He can never have a headache, like a wife.”

 

~ Elliott Erwitt

“There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.”

~ Simone de Beauvoir

“We are all living letters. All our troubles, our problems and our joys are written inside us. We are living photographs. Photography reveals the images hidden within us”

~ Edouard Boubat
(1923 - 1999)