Words of wisdom can help aspiring photographers

I'm a fan of famous quotations. In a few words, meaningful ideas and concepts can be summed up. What's more, quotations give us food for thought. They also help us remember ideas; ideas we hope we can use in our lives.

I've been collecting quotations for years. Some apply specifically to photography, some to life.

In this week's column I'd like to share a few of my favorites -- sets of simple words that might help you become a better photographer.

"Photography is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately." -- Edward Weston

"Look for what you don't see." -- Rashid Elisha

"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event." -- Henri Cartier-Bresson

"If I could tell the story in words, I would not have to lug around a camera." -- Lewis Hiene

"The best digital cameras have six to 16 million pixels. Our retina, consisting of rods and cones, has over 100 million sensors." -- Dr. Richard D. Zakia

"The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance." -- Ansel Adams

"I don't care if you make a print on a bath mat, just as long as it is a good print." -- Edward Weston

"One photo out of focus is a mistake, 10 photos out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photos out of focus are a style." -- Anonymous

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary." -- David Bailey

"There is no audience as far as I am concerned. I am the audience." -- Joel Meyerowitz

"If you just take a picture of what's there, it destroys the mystery, the magic." -- Art Kane

"The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition." -- W.H. Auden

"Art is a line that makes us realize the truth." -- Pablo Picasso