Duchemin Quotes & Sayings

I dream big dreams every day; it's up to the universe to keep up. — David DuChemin

It is the daily task of the creative to be curious and collect dots. The most creative people I know fill their brains, their idea factories, with as much raw material as they can. They have voracious appetites. — David DuChemin

I have fallen a hopeless victim to the Turk; he is the most charming of mortals ... — Gertrude Bell

On the odd days Auto Tone gets it right I assume it's using some kind of voodoo. — David DuChemin

Consider this your permission to indulge that inner anarchist. Stop following the path you ought to take; follow instead the one you long to take. — David DuChemin

Vision is that original spark that was ignited within you and made you pick up a camera to capture whatever it is you saw, that made you turn to shout "Did you see that!" only to find no one there
so you created an image to do the telling. — David DuChemin

You are responsible for every element within the frame. — David DuChemin

Courage is not an absence of fear, but an act of the will to move forward in the presence of fear. Fear whispers, "You might ... " Courage rebuffs it with, "Sure, but ... ." To seek a fearless life is not the same as seeking a life of courage. If we're talking about story, which is about nothing if not life, no one gives a damn about fearlessness. Very few great stories move forward with a fearless hero. Why would they? — David DuChemin

Anyone can take a picture of poverty; it's easy to focus on the dirt and hurt of the poor. It's much harder - and much more needful - to pry under that dirt and reveal the beauty and dignity of people that, but for their birth into a place and circumstance different from our own, are just like ourselves. I want my images to tell the story of those people and to move us beyond pity to justice and mercy. — David DuChemin

Take a moment. What was it you saw when you were moved to pick up the camera? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you mutter something about thinking "it looked cool." Dig deeper. Was it a thought, a feeling, a simple moment when your eyes did a double-take at the intersection of two lines? Was it a lick of light, two blocks of color? — David DuChemin

I know if i told her about liking guys, she'd probably stop wanting to date me, which would be a huge plus. but i also know i'd immediately become her gay pet, and that's the last kind of leash i want. and it's not like i'm really that gay. i fucking hate madonna. — David Levithan

It's the difference between your wife's passport photograph and the portraits you took when you got
engaged. Both may have been created with similar technology, but what stands in that great gulf between them are the passion you have for your wife, the knowledge you have of her personality, and your willingness to use your craft, time, and energy to express that. One says, "She looks like this." The other says, "This is who she is to me. It's how I feel about her. See how amazing she is? — David DuChemin

And someone turns out the lights in the library, as if being in the dark will make them invisible, but the noise reaches into the house, into the room, into their lungs. Someone is being beaten in the street below. What are they going to do? How long can you pretend this is not happening? — Edmund De Waal

Ideas rarely come out whole. They change as they get brought to life. New constraints appear, new directions suggest themselves, and new influences come to bear. — David DuChemin

Photographers, like few other kinds of artists I can imagine, have an insanely
personal relationship with their gear. — David DuChemin

For millennia our suffering has been the forge in which great art has been made and great lives have been lived. — David DuChemin

Bruce Percy, a brilliant landscape photographer, once said to me, "You can't polish a turd." Wise words. — David DuChemin

A representational photograph says, 'This is what Vienna looked like.' An interpretational photograph goes one better and says, 'This is what Vienna was like. This is how I felt about it. — David DuChemin

How do you tell somebody how to find what they're looking for when ten years ago you came from the same place, and have yet to find it yourself? — Tony Earley

While performing the great majority of the actions in their life, people are totally unaware. We tend to go through our daily activities mechanically. We talk without real purpose. We do things without even knowing that we do them. We are not really present to what we are doing. Even if we practise being aware, entire portions of our days can elapse before we retrieve our thread of awareness. In short, we are not living our life, we are sleeping it. — Samuel Sagan

I've only ever known growing up across different countries - to me it's just fun. — Lily Collins

The story is told of Michelangelo being asked about his methods for sculpting.
He replied simply that he worked on a block of marble, removing all that was not
part of the sculpture until only the sculpture remained. I suspect this oversimplifies
the art of sculpture, but it's an excellent analogy for photography, which is
essentially an art of exclusion. — David DuChemin

Knowing failure is part of our process, and leads to new ideas, stronger work, and more honest questions, liberates us to peer, a little less frightened, into the unknown. — David DuChemin

Slow down, take time, allow yourself to be wildly diverted from your plan. People are the soul of the place; don't forget to meet them and enjoy their company as you explore a place. — David DuChemin

I am most excited by people, places, and cultures that have not yet been overtaken by the creeping homogeny of the west. I love the color and texture of those places, the vitality of life, and the ritual and symbolism of cultures not yet tyrannized by the need to wear the same jeans and believe the same things. — David DuChemin

We view South Africa as one of our closest strategic partners in the developing world and in the African continent. — Pratibha Patil

A photograph can communicate a couple things - and sometimes only one thing - very well. The more you try to say with your photograph, the greater the chance that you will say nothing at all. — David DuChemin

Oh, I thought that I was giving him so much!
And he to me - and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Of what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
The one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. — T. S. Eliot

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life. — Seneca.

A writer is never alone. He always has his characters to talk to. — M.B. Mohan

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

As long as we're alive and interacting with life, the world, and the people around us, we'll have something to say. — David DuChemin

To do what we should in art is bondage. To tell others, with our art, what they should think or feel or do, is propaganda. — David DuChemin

Arrogance and a teachable spirit are mutually exclusive. — David DuChemin

There is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The magic rarely happens within our comfort zone, but outside it, on the ragged, scary edge, where we have to fight like hell to keep from drowning in the unknown. — David DuChemin

The rattling of the relays of the Z4 was the only interesting thing to be experienced in Zurich's night life! — Konrad Zuse

I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard, — Ann Coulter

The real failure is to rob this world of the contribution only you can make, and to fail to make work that truly gives you that 'this is what I was created to do' feeling that has no equal. — David DuChemin

Photographing a culture in the here and now often means photographing the intersection of the present with the past. — David DuChemin

I am convinced that the Dreamers, at least the Dreamers of today, would rather live white than live free. In — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I do like comic book movies, but only the ones that I read as a kid. — Simon Baker

The second way to control the light is with the aperture in the lens, which is a diaphragm that opens and closes to control the light. It's measured in cryptic little numbers that only mathematicians and practitioners of the occult understand. — David DuChemin