Enjoy this collection of quotes by Gregory Heisler.
“A photographer is responsible for creating a climate in which they can do their best work.” – Gregory Heisler
“Photography’s 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent moving furniture.” – Gregory Heisler
“Shoot what you can’t help but shoot” – Gregory Heisler
“To me, style is like your fingerprint. Nobody else has it.” – Gregory Heisler
“Magazines don’t have enough confidence to have their own style, so they use a borrowed style. That is shocking to me, but your perception is very accurate. It’s a way to be more commercially viable, but to me, that’s not having a style, that’s having a schtick.” – Gregory Heisler
“Normally I do all my own post work. It’s not that I do it better than anyone else, I just do it my way. I make decisions. People who print at labs are probably far better printers, but they won’t make my decisions mid-process. I don’t want to be out of the loop. I want to be a photographer and do all of it.” – Gregory Heisler
“There are a lot of decisions to make, creatively. Now, with digital, you can really be the author of your own work. From the beginning to the end of the process, you control everything.” – Gregory Heisler
“Photography’s 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent moving furniture.” ― Gregory Heisler
“People aren’t hiring just a picture, they’re hiring someone they can work with. That plays a big role.” – Gregory Heisler
“Fulfill the assignment first. I aim to please, probably to a fault. This is not a strategy I’d recommend to the next photographer, because it can curtail one’s own creative impulses. As a solution, photographers sometimes shoot two variations of a picture: one for the client that addresses the assignment and one for themselves that floats their boat.” ― Gregory Heisler
“I hate to say it because I think people are risk averse these days more than ever. Before they even pick up the phone, they know what the picture’s going to be. So there’s a certain comfort in that, a certain security that they can lay out the cover of the magazine and kind of know what it’s going to be.” – Gregory Heisler
“The picture I was hoping for is never the picture I get, but yeah, I think they fail all the time. Fortunately my clients don’t think they do, so I can continue to have a career. But I just look at them and think.” – Gregory Heisler
“I never do pictures that I’ve done before – but I really try not to. Whenever I get an assignment I try to think how to shoot this person for this story in this magazine at this point in time.” – Gregory Heisler
“The work is primarily subject-driven. All decisions flow from there. The photographs are all made in response to a unique subject, in particular context, at a specific moment in time. The thoughtful preparedness that defines my working method actually facilitates spontaneity and allows me to embrace surprise. I always have a game plan but view it as merely the jumping off point.” – Gregory Heisler
“A lot of the challenge and the reason for the success of those one-shot photographers is that their pictures almost have to be subject proof. Because you usually only have a few minutes with the person. You never know who’s going to walk into the room – whether they’re going to be friendly, grumpy, sick of photographers, or between meetings.” – Gregory Heisler
“It happens a lot. The first frame is the winner.” ― Gregory Heisler
“Photography isn’t just the “premier coup,” it’s the only coup. That’s the very essence of photographic portraiture. Whatever happens in front of the lens stays. What’s captured during the encounter is all that exists. A photograph has to bring all of his or her resources to bear on the moment of exposure. All the planning, intuition, technical prowess, and knowledge, as well as the trust and rapport you have (or haven’t) established, will show up in the picture, frozen forever. It’s like an interview, except that’s no opportunity for a follow-up question. It triggers a classic left/right brain struggle: spontaneous yet calculated, emotional and rational. It’s exciting but terrifying, thrilling when it works and heartbreaking when it doesn’t.” – Greg Heisler
“What is so appealing about black and white? Well, first of all, it’s unshackled from color, unfettered by the burden of wrangling the randomness of color as it exists in the world. By its very nature, black and white abstracts the images from reality and forces us to engage with it anew. Even the phrase “documentary black and white” is a bit of an oxymoron because a black-and-white image is anything but an accurate record being on enormous step removed from reality. But this frees up the photographer to see the world and re-create it in a fresh way, shifting the images can be symbolic or specific, a subtle statement or a sledgehammer. It can’t help but be more subjective, more right-brained communication.” – Greg Heisler
“I wanted to grow in terms of making pictures, not adapting to new software and technology. But that’s the game now.” – Gregory Heisler
“The kinds of pictures I want to take are the ones I don’t know how to make. And I don’t know what they’re going to look like yet, but I don’t want to keep on taking the pictures that I already took. I’m proud of them, I like them, but I don’t feel like I need to do more of them. I feel like moving in a different direction.” – Gregory Heisler
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