“Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks.”

— Henri Cartier-Bresson

“A shutter working at a speed of one-fourth to one-twenty-fifth of a second will answer all purposes. A little blur in a moving subject will often aid to giving the impression of action and motion.”

— Alfred Stieglitz - The Hand Camera, 1897

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“If I wait for something here, I may lose something better over there.”

— Edward Weston

“The perspective of an image is controlled by the distance of the lens from the subject; changing the focal-length of the lens changes the size of the image, but does not alter the perspective. Many photographers overlook this fact, or are unaware if its significance.”

— Ansel Adams; Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs


This sums up the whole zoom lens issue. If you fully understand this concept, you may use a zoom lens to your heart’s content, with the full knowledge that it’s not a limiting factor in your work.

“I threw away my tools. I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you’ve done before, it will push you to where you’ve never gone before.”

— Chuck Close, Interview, 2009

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“We must come to know intuitively what our lenses and other equipment will do for us and know how to use them.”

— Ansel Adams, The Camera

“A Holga Camera is a study in plastic imperfection, and to use it is an exercise in breaking free from dependence on technology, precision, and uber-sharpness. The slight softness of the images, uncontrollable vignetting and peculiar light leaks create a partnership between you and your Holga. These “flaws”, accompanied by your creative choices, result in a quasi-serendipitous form of art. A Holga stretches our visual perception. Using a Holga adds another facet to the way we see the world. We notice more things, and thus we examine and evaluate their status. A Holga is an educator teaching us a new visual vocabulary with which to describe out world. A Holga is a rule breaker. To use a Holga is to utterly change the terms of reference most people use to interpret Photography.”

— The Holga Credo, from the box of the Holga 120WPC Wide Pinhole Camera

“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”

— Alfred Stieglitz

Walker Evans once said, “People always ask me what camera I use. It’s not the camera, it’s … ” and he tapped his temple with his index finger.

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”

— Georgia O’Keefe

for my wife, Heidi

“The ‘machine-gun’ approach to photography – by which many negatives are made with the hope that one will be good – is fatal to serious results.”

— Ansel Adams

Last summer, my family and I visited Washington D.C., and while at the National Zoo, witnessed the death of photography in action. A group of three young men wielding DSLRs were snapping away at various animals of interest. With horror, I watched as the youngest would peel off a frame, then with a quick slapping motion, beat the pop-up flash into submission, obviously annoyed that the camera was second-guessing him in trying to right the wrong he was about to make.

There’s an app for that. It’s called PROGRAM mode, moron.

Sorry.

I guess when you have a digital camera, and a really large memory card, you can afford to shoot this way. The problem is, you don’t learn anything about photography in the process. And that knowledge makes all the difference. So, keep snapping away junior. I can take heart in knowing your work will be no threat to mine.

To be fair, he’s a victim of the new digital age. The age in which we have songs we didn’t even know we had on our iPods. Because digital media and the automation it affords tends to substitute for meaningful thought. Sorry, life is just not that random.