Quotes & Sayings About Photographing Yourself

I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film. — Mary Ellen Mark

When I photograph, I do not think much. If you looked at my contacts you would ask yourself: "What is this guy doing?" But I keep working with my contacts and with my prints, I look at them all the time. I believe that the result of this work stays in me and at the moment of photographing it comes out, without my thinking of it. — Josef Koudelka

The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas. — David LaChapelle

What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing ... if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph. — Eve Arnold

Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women. — Lynsey Addario

I've played in bands myself, and sat on the floor photographing some of the greatest bands in the world while they rehearse. What's always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you're in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you. — Chris Milk

I just love photographing. I don't do it for anyone else. — Kim Weston

People think photography is about photographing. To me, it's about relationships. — Lynsey Addario

I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul. — Mary Ellen Mark

I consider myself very lucky. I'm known for photographing celebrities, but, in a nutshell, my first love is photography. — Douglas Kirkland

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it. — Duane Michals

I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Geneve, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe. — Francois Gautier

I had taken the photograph from afar (distance being the basic glitch in our relationship), using my Nikon and zoom lens while hiding behind a fake marble pillar. I was hiding because if he knew I'd been secretly photographing him for all these months he would think I was immature, neurotic and obsessive.
I'm not.
I'm an artist.
Artists are always misunderstood.(Thwonk) — Joan Bauer

When you're photographing anything to do with war and conflict you're photographing something impossible. Everything you do is just clumsy and stupid and half witted. Because it is impossible to portray the full width and breadth of everything that you are up against. — Simon Norfolk

I just happened to have my camera and be photographing my friends. It was totally innocent; there was no purpose to the photographs. There was a purity to them that wasn't planned; it was realism. — Larry Clark

I have to shoot three cassettes of film a day, even when not 'photographing', in order to keep the eye in practice. — Josef Koudelka

Whats up, Q?" asked Gus.
Oh, we're just scattering some dead fish about town, breaking some windows, photographing naked guys, hanging out in skyscraper lobbies at three-fifteen in the morning, that type of thing.
"Not much," I answered. — John Green

I'm always mentally photographing everything as practice. — Minor White

I've always been fascinated by twins. In my forty years of photographing, whenever there was an opportunity, I would take a picture of twins. I found the notion that two people could appear to look exactly alike very compelling. — Mary Ellen Mark

When you start photographing yourself, you are going to be amazed at all the things you find out about yourself, and you'll be glad you did. — Bunny Yeager

I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There's nothing much interesting to tell about me; what's interesting is the person I'm photographing, and that's what I try to show. [ ... ] I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world ... that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What's interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture. — Mary Ellen Mark

..every time scientists try to observe the quantum world they disturb it. And because at least one quantum of energy must always be involved, there is no way the size of this disturbance can be reduced.

Our acts of observing the universe, our attempts to gather knowledge, are no longer strictly objective because in seeking to know the universe we act to disturb it. Science prides itself on objectivity, but now Nature is telling us we never see a pure, pristine and objective quantum world. In every act of observation the observing subject enters into the cosmos and disturbs it in an irreducible way.

Science is like photographing a series of close ups with your back to the sun. No matter which way you move, your shadow always falls across the scene you photograph. No matter what you do, you can never efface yourself from the photographed scene. — F. David Peat

It's one thing when you are photographing others, but when you are exposing yourself and your insecurities, that's the biggest risk. That's always scary. — Petra Collins

Seeing God is all about getting in touch with reality. If you want to photograph God, focus your lens on Hamakom, The Place, anyplace where you see divine light illuminating reality. Let your camera collect the light reflecting from the reality shaping your everyday life and you will find yourself photographing God in action." (From the Introduction to the book Photograph God) — Mel Alexenberg

We seem to know when to 'tap the heart.' Others have hit the intellect. We can hit them in all emotional way. Those who appeal to the intellect only appeal to a very limited group. The real thing behind this is: we are in the motion picture business, only we are drawing them instead of photographing them. — Walt Disney

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

I was flying planes before I was driving cars. I started gliding when I was fourteen, about when I started photographing. I was a geeky kid, and the camera was a way in high school for me to have some power. Flying was, too, I guess. — Michael Light

I think when you're photographing - when anybody's photographing another person in a private situation, it's a kind of a seduction but it's not always a sexual seduction ... I feel like when Jack [Welpott] was doing it, it was a sexual seduction and when I was doing it, it was more of a psychological seduction in order to get them to cooperate with me ... Not because I wanted them to spread their legs or ... be, you know, Wanna sleep with me? , or whatever. — Judy Dater

I think for me, what I'm doing on set is I'm watching things happen as an audience member and trying to just look at, what's the image we're photographing, how will that advance the story and what will the next image be. — Christopher Nolan

My way in for photographing people is really their work. I'm always interested in what people make, and then I photograph the person. Sometimes the person is a disappointment. But that's the risk. It informs me a lot about the character of a person if I know their work first. — Anton Corbijn

I think I misunderstood Instagram and just thought it was people photographing their friends, and discovered there were a number of people, a number of artists, who were taking it very seriously and doing very imaginative work with Instagram as the medium. — Stephen Shore

Just as long as it pays enough to give me the option to go back to work part-time if I decide to pursue my hobby professionally, which is photographing cool manicures for Instagram. — Mindy Kaling

I know now that before I take a picture I have to be sure about how I feel about the subjects. What I don't know is if I should explain to them what I'm doing while I'm photographing them ... — Tina Barney

Photographing these flowers has made me see the world differently. It was as if I had lifted a secret veil from a subject I had loved and appreciated my whole life. I offer these photographs with the hope that they will open a new visual or meditative universe for you as well. — Joyce Tenneson

I try not to let the material aspects of different cultures distract me from getting to the essence of the person I'm photographing. Whether it's a man or a woman. Wherever they're from, I try not to let social status or cultural background affect me or affect the person. I strip all those things away to get down to the essence of the human being, the person. — Mario Sorrenti

The trouble with photographing beautiful women is that you never get into the dark room until after they've gone. — Yousuf Karsh

Old Prague was a story-book city caked in grime: ancient, soot-blackened. History lived in every detail: in the deerstalker rooftops and the blue-sparking trams. He wandered the streets in disbelief, photographing everything, images from Kafka crowding into his head. With the turn of every corner it came back to him: the special frisson you get behind enemy lines. — Philip Sington

If you're really in the process of photographing, you are absolutely aware. You are looking. — Jessica Lange

Photography is a life of learning. That's all I want from photography. I don't want the money. I don't need the fame. I don't need the admiration. I'd like all of those things, but I don't need them. Because what I get from photographing is learning. I have spent my life learning by looking through a lens. — Rondal Partridge

To photograph people is to obligate them in some way to face things they weren't expecting to. — Susana Fortes

I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself. — Georgia O'Keeffe

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