Edward Weston Quotes
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This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.
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The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise.
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It's hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.
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Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.
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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.
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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.
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My work is never intellectual. I never make a negative unless emotionally moved by my subject.
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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.
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Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.
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I don't care if you make a print on a bath mat, just as long as it is a good print.
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Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.
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......so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.
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...through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.
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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.
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If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!
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The creative force in man recognizes and records these rhythms with the medium most suitable to him, the object, or the moment, feeling the cause, the life within the outer form. Recording unfelt facts, acquired by rule, results in sterile inventory. To see the Thing Itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism - the casual noting of the superficial phase, a transitory mood.
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A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.
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The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?
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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.
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Art is based on order. The world is full of 'sloppy Bohemians' and their work betrays them.
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I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.
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Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.
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I see no reason for recording the obvious.
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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.
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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.
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An excellent conception can be quite obscured by faulty technical execution or clarified by faultless technique.
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Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.
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I find myself every so often looking at my ground glass as though the unrecorded image might escape me!
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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.
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In common with other artists the photographer wants his finished print to convey to others his own response to his subject. In the fulfillment of this aim, his greatest asset is the directness of the process he employs. But this advantage can only be retained if he simplifies his equipment and technic to the minimum necessary, and keeps his approach from from all formula, art-dogma, rules and taboos. Only then can he be free to put his photographic sight to use in discovering and revealing the nature of the world he lives in.
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