Not Looking At The Camera Quotes & Sayings

In photographs of us together, she is always looking at the camera, and I am always looking at her. — Jandy Nelson

I seem to walk in the world as two people. The normal everyday-me is as preoccupied, unobservant and oblivious to visual clues as I ever was. Then there is the photographer-me, the one who has a camera in hand and a specific project in mind, and then the world suddenly jumps to life with potential pictures, as if a switch had been thrown in my brain and a different person is looking out of the same eyes. — Bill Jay

When you are interviewing someone, never let your camera person turn off the camera. The second you turn off the camera, they'll say the magic thing that you'd been looking for the whole interview. People want to relax after the performance is done. Don't be afraid of awkward silence. That is your friend. — Marshall Curry

Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though. — Richard Dawkins

This is the funny thing about Skype. No one is really looking into the camera. People always looking down because they're looking at the image. You wish the camera was there in the center. — Stanley Tucci

I take bits and pieces from every director. I'd say Sylvain [White] and Nimrod [Antal]. They were more about teaching me lens sizes and depth of field and how to move the camera and lighting. I do want to direct and I didn't go to film school, so having a director that are very much hands on that way and looking to let me learn, that is a key factor. — Columbus Short

The big challenge is looking ripped and lean without being too big because on camera, it's easy to appear thick. — Parker Young

The preference most of them had for seeing through their camera, rather than looking at the real thing, and so on. — Alice Munro

The positive psychology field has taught us about the benefits of optimism and happiness. One study correlated the life spans of Major League Baseball players with their smiles. In 2010, researchers Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger analyzed 230 baseball cards from 1952, a time when cards featured athletes looking straight at the camera. The results will make you want to smile.
* Players not smiling had an average life span of 72.9 years.
* Players partially smiling had an average life span of 75.0 years.
* Players with a full smile had an average life span of 79.9 years. — Jim Afremow

I live in Nashville, and I love to sing. When I'm on stage, I feel like a performer for sure. I know people are looking at me and taking pictures and singing along, and that part's wonderful, but I do live in Nashville. I live the most boring life away from what you see me on camera doing. — Carrie Underwood

I don't really diet or anything. I'm miserable when I'm dieting and I like the way I look. I'm really sick of all these actresses looking like birds I'd rather look a little chubby on camera and look like a person in real life, than look great on screen and look like a scarecrow in real life. — Jennifer Lawrence

In looking at Hollywood and its structure, the director controls the medium, and I want to be in control of certain things. I want to be able to get my own ideas and my own feelings out there, and the only way to do that is to be behind the camera. — Jamie Foxx

That's how hospitals get you. You go in to visit and before you know it they got a camera stuck up your butt and they're looking' to find poloponies. — Janet Evanovich

He nods, looking through the pictures on the screen on the back of his camera. Some relationships can only exist as memories. But unlike ephemeral digital images that can be sorted and deleted, we can't erase the past. We have to learn to live with all the images that are stored in love's archive, memories tagged good and bad. No Photoshopping. Accept the negative before moving forward. — Shannon Mullen

You think the only thing looking at you is this steel thing, but behind the camera is this living, breathing person operating the camera whose job it is to watch you. — Uzo Aduba

The photographs of space taken by our astronauts have been published all over the place. But the eye is a much more dynamic mechanism than any camera or pictures. It's a more exciting view in person than looking at the photographs. Of course, I personally am sick and tired of hearing people talk like that: I want to see it myself! — Burt Rutan

I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more. — Keanu Reeves

When the protagonist breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera in a movie, it's generally been used for comedic purposes, rather than feeling like they're looking into your soul. — Chris Milk

With mockumentaries, the conceit is that the characters are being interviewed, so you can start a scene and cut to a character looking at the camera and saying, "I'm working on this project," instead of having to figure out ways for people to talk naturally about what they're doing. You see this problem in pilots - people end up explaining things to each other that they'd never explain in real life. — Michael Schur

But don't get caught out there looking goofy. It's weird. When you do something that stinks, it's going to last forever on the Internet. There's always someone in the audience with a camera phone and if you're not 100%, you're going to be watching yourself on YouTube. — Jamie Foxx

I'm quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I've been doing it for so long, since I was a kid. So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera. — Winona Ryder

Learning that aesthetic as a kid - seeing those photos - made me think that that's what photos are supposed to look like. I never understood snapshots. I was looking at them like, "This is horrible; that's not what a picture is supposed to look like." I was taught by these photos. So when I picked up the camera, though I had never done it before, I kind of already knew what I was doing. — Jeff Vespa

There is a very particular feeling I get when I have the camera in my hand, looking at an actor talk, knowing that what I'm shooting will end up on the screen. — Haskell Wexler

We as comics do want an immediate response from the audience. It's really quiet on the set, and there are only the producers, and the director, so a comic is looking for someone to give a reaction, even if it is the camera guy. — Cedric The Entertainer

I discovered that this camera was the technical means in photography of communicating what the world looks like in a state of heightened awareness. And it's that awareness of really looking at the everyday world with clear and focused attention that I'm interested in. — Stephen Shore

The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much. — Annie Leibovitz

I've been in wars and in riots and hung out of many helicopters in the early days. And there's a detachment that happens when you look through the camera. You're looking for the shot. — Haskell Wexler

On Laurence Olivier as Hamlet in a 1948 film: Olivier's idea of introspection was to hood his eyes, dentalize his consonants and let the camera circle his blondined head like a sparrow looking for a place to deposit its droppings. — Robert Brustein

The history of horror movies goes back a long way ... of people trying to convincingly be terrified when looking at a piece of tape on the side of the camera box. I have a whole new respect for it. — Josh Hamilton

I think a lot of people like hidden-camera shows where they think they're spying on somebody who doesn't know they're looking at them. And nobody takes it seriously - you either enjoy it and get a laugh out of the reactions or not. — Betty White

I quit my job. I bought myself a real cheap, like, around-the-world flight ticket, and I went to 16 countries for six months just backpacking, living in cheap hostels, looking for stories with a camera and my ex-girlfriend. — Malik Bendjelloul

John Peters certainly seemed to think she was involved. And why not Diane? Wasn't Night Vale a town full of hidden evils and the secretly malevolent? That was what the Tourism Board's new brochures said right on the front ('A town full of hidden evils and the secretly malevolent') along with a picture of a diverse group of townsfolk smiling and looking up at the camera in the windowless prison they would be kept in until enough tourists visited town to buy their release. — Joseph Fink

When he settles back onto his knee, he wipes a tear away from his own eyes. "Sherry, until I met you I didn't know what life was. I had no clue that I wasn't even alive. It's like you came along and woke up my soul." He's looking straight at her as he talks. He doesn't sound nervous at all, like he's determined to prove to her how serious he is. He takes a deep breath and then continues. "I'll never be able to give you everything you deserve, but I'll definitely spend the rest of my life trying."
He pulls the ring out of the box and slides it on her finger. "I'm not asking you to marry me, Sherry. I'm telling you to marry me, because I can't live without you."
Sherry wraps her arms around his neck and they hold onto one another and cry. "Okay," she finally says. When they begin to kiss, his hand reaches over and turns off the camera. — Colleen Hoover

The picnic table in the photo was an old door set up on sawhorses, and the seats were old tree stumps, or maybe thick pieces of firewood, topped with square cushions. Six men were sitting there, not looking at the camera, but at the beautiful woman with long, dark hair, almost to her waist, standing at the head of the table. She was smiling, her arms outstretched, as if welcoming everyone to her world. The apple tree in the background, just barely visible, was stretching a single limb out to her, as if wanting to be in the photo with her.
Even it looked a little in love with her. — Sarah Addison Allen

There's a certain way people are used to seeing nude women, and that's in a submissive, coy pose, not looking at the camera. And in this poster, I'm looking dead into the camera with no expression on my face. I think it freaks a lot of people out. — Rooney Mara

You see the suffering of children all the time nowadays. Wars and famines are played out before us in our living rooms, and almost every week there are pictures of children who have been through unimaginable loss and horror. Mostly they look very calm. You see them looking into the camera, directly at the lens, and knowing what they have been through you expect to see terror or grief in their eyes, yet so often there's no visible emotion at all. They look so blank it would be easy to imagine that they weren't feeling much.
And though I do not for a moment equate what I went through with the suffering of those children, I do remember feeling as they look. I remember Matt talking to me
others as well, but mostly Matt
and I remember the enormous effort required even to hear what he said. I was so swamped by unmanageable emotions that I couldn't feel a thing. It was like being at the bottom of the sea. — Mary Lawson

Kai neared his desk again, seeing that the fugitive's profile had been transferred to the screen. His frown deepened. Perhaps not dangerous, but young and inarguably good-looking. His prison photo showed him flippantly winking at the camera. Kai hated him immediately. — Marissa Meyer

This question was fired at me by one Ulf Bronner, an assistant director, in his mid-thirties perhaps, and a strikingly ill-dressed man. Still, he was not dressed as shabbily as the cameramen; through my recent work for and with broadcasting companies I have discovered that they are the scruffiest-looking individuals in any form of employment, outdone only by press photographers. I have no idea why it should be thus, but as far as I can make out press photographers seem to wear the ragged cast-offs of television cameramen. Perhaps they imagine that nobody will ever see them, because after all the camera is in front of their faces. Whenever I come across an unflattering picture of someone in a magazine - they may be grimacing or similar - I frequently wonder what the photographer must have looked like. This Bronner fellow was better dressed than that, but not much. — Timur Vermes

Photography is an investigation of both the outer and the inner worlds. The first experiences with the camera involve looking at the world beyond the lens, trusting the instrument will 'capture' something 'seen.' The terms shoot and take are not accidental; they represent an attitude of conquest and appropriation. Only when the photographer grows into perception and creative impulse does the term make define a condition of empathy between the external and the internal events. — Ansel Adams

In Paranoid Park there is this Punk girl that keeps looking straight into The camera when she speaks, It's like she's speaking to us. — James Franco

I've rarely played glamorous roles. I don't mind looking plain on camera. — Joanne Froggatt

It was a scene I was really looking forward to, and one that I embraced, and when we were filming it, George got closer and closer and closer with that camera - he was practically up my nose for the final shot. So I knew it was a moment that I had to do my best to get right. — Ian McDiarmid

We've got a nation of people who have one eye looking out for the next speed camera, another looking for a speed limit sign and another looking at the speedometer - which is a bit of a shame, when you only have two eyes. — Paul Smith

Sometimes, when you are reading a book you are enjoying very much, you begin thinking so hard about the characters and the story that you might forget all about the author, even if he is in grave danger and would very much appreciate your help. The same thing can happen if you are looking at a photograph. You might think so hard about whatever is in the photograph that you forget all about the person behind the camera. — Lemony Snicket

Kissing scenes are never romantic or sexy, they're actually super technical, like, "Move your head, you're blocking her light," or, "Stop looking like an idiot when you kiss her." You do it again and again because of the camera angles and takes and whatnot. So by the end of it, it's not even kissing. All the anything is totally drained out of it. — Will Poulter

Nina stared at the woman who had raised her and saw the truth at last.
Her mother was a lioness. A warrior. A woman who'd chosen a life of hell for herself because she wanted to give up and didn't know how.
And with that small understanding came another, bigger one. Nina suddenly saw her own life in focus. All these years, she'd been traveling the world over, looking for her own truth in other woman's lives.
But it was here all along, at home with the one woman she's never even tried to understand. No wonder Nina had never felt finished, never wanted to publish her photographs of the woman. Her quest had always been leading up to this moment, this understanding. She's been hiding behind the camera, looking through the glass, trying to find herself. But how could she? How could any woman know her own story until she knew her mother's? — Kristin Hannah

Handheld camera is approximating what we're seeing when we're looking at each other, and kind of looking around, and your eyes whipping around. It adds an immediacy, where you feel like you are watching something through your own eyes, standing there with them. And that just allows you to take more liberties and have more fun with people's behavior. — Paul Feig

The very first video experience I had was in high school. They brought a black-and-white closed-circuit surveillance camera into the classroom. I will never forget, as a kid, looking at that image. — Bill Viola

New video gaming systems are coming out that track every joint of your body. It's basically going to become a normal thing for us to allow Microsoft to put a three-dimensional camera on top of your television set looking at you, which sounds like a Big Brother scenario if ever I heard one, but, still, it's what we're going to allow. — Jesse Schell

It's an incredible privilege for an actor to look into the camera. It's like looking right into the heart of the film, and you can't take that lightly. — Emily Watson

In our yearbook, there is a picture of me and Miah - sitting in Central Park - Miah has his lips poked out and is about to kiss me on my cheek. And I'm looking straight into the camera laughing. Two and half years have passed, and still, this is how I remember us. This is how I will always remember us. And I know when I look at that picture, when I think back to those few months with Miah, that I did not miss the moment. — Jacqueline Woodson

I taught myself to use a camera - it's not very difficult to use a camera, but I never bothered looking at any textbooks on how to make a picture. I had a much more casual relation to it. For me at the time it was much more about the process rather than the results. — Gillian Wearing

And the camera position, the organization, looking for repeating forms, shapes, trying to set up a visual rhythm seemed to come very natural. All of a sudden I was in a forest of aluminum and steel rather than a forest that we might think of in a traditional sense. — John Sexton

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. — Edward Weston

And in more than half the pictures, she isn't looking at the camera; she's looking at him. Not the way I would look at Ben Parish, all squishy around the eyes. She looks at Evan fiercely, like, This here? It's mine — Rick Yancey

A lot of athletes have star quality, but they just can't perform in front of a camera. So no matter how good-looking you are, no matter what kind of presence you have, you still have to be able to be a convincing performer to become a star. — Richard D. Zanuck

Holding my camera, freezing, and a mile from flames that could burn me alive, I'd finally found what I didn't know I was looking for. — Jamie McGuire

Butte was once a grand city. To me, that city is like one big stage for Edward Hopper. You could put your camera anywhere, and you felt you were looking at his paintings. — Wim Wenders

The camera is objective. When it records a face it can't make any hierarchical decisions about a nose being more important than a cheek. The camera is not aware of what it is looking at. It just gets it all down. — Chuck Close

Here's the beauty of a camera: you don't have to come up with words for what you're looking at ... Maybe another angle is needed sometimes. When we're burned out from writing, we can photograph or draw, look at the world in a different way, and photographers could try writing what they see. — Barbara Abercrombie

I know what it takes to go from the point where someone's looking at a newspaper article, and thinking, 'Oh, this would make a great TV series,' to the point where you're actually on a set and there's a camera aimed at someone. — Wentworth Miller

Being an anchor is not just a matter of sitting in front of a camera and looking pretty. — David Brinkley