Find an insightful collection of 18 quotes selected by Sean Duggan.
Here’s my favorite quote from his selection.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
Which is your favorite quote?
Find 17 more quotes here.
Find more Photographer’s Favorite Quotes here.
Learn more about Sean Duggan here.
Chris Orwig provides quick candid answers to 20 questions.
What’s the best thing about photography?
Life is short and time moves too fast. Yet, photography has provided me with the way to try to stop, slow and savor moments that otherwise would have been lost. Even more, good photographs seem to be a concentration of life, a distillation like evaporated sea water where only the salt remains. And photography has become a means and a passport to get out into the world and to live life with more focus, intensity and passion. In a sense, what’s best about photography is that it has saved me. It’s saved me from myself and helped me to focus on others and on the grand mystery of life. And in doing so, photography has given me a new way to see and live.
What’s the thing that interests you most about photography?
The idea that the camera can help you dig more deeply, see more clearly and live life more fully.
What’s the thing that interests you most about your own photographs?
In my own photographs I am always struck by the autobiographical nature of them. In a sense, I can look at a photograph and remember who I was when I took it and how I changed because of it. And collectively, these photographs help me appreciate, remember and make sense of my own life story.
How do you know when an image doesn’t work?
When an image is too obvious, too straightforward or too cliché I know that it isn’t going to work. Often, it’s these images that first catch my eye, yet the eye can easily be deceived. As one of my mentors once said, “Learning how to look and then look again, is as important as learning how to capture a frame.”
How do you know when an image is good?
I’m interested in capturing photographs that are authentic, alive and real. I like pictures that don’t feel staged but get beneath the surface of things. I like pictures that are simple, strong and can’t quite be placed in a particular time. What makes one of these photographs good is when I still feel it has these qualities a number of weeks after the fact. An image is good when it stands the test of time.
How do you know when an image is great?
An image is great when it can’t quite be explained. Rather than being “clear” these images have a poetic element of mystery that draws you in and deepens who you are and how you see the world. These images are timeless, they captivate and compel.
What’s the most useful photographic mantra?
As Marc Riboud said, “Photography is savoring life at 1/100th of second.”
Read more of this Q&A with Chris here.
Find a collection of Chris’ favorite quotes here.
Browse Chris books Visual Poetry and People Pictures here.
Watch Chris’ TEDx video here.
Find out more about Chris Orwig here.
Sean Duggan and I discuss Exploring Your Tools and Clarifying Your Process.
Find out more about Sean Duggan here.
Read Sean’s Q&A here.
Find more Photographers On Photography resources here.
Sean Duggan provides quick candid answers to 20 questions
What’s the best thing about photography?
It provides a window through which we can view our own world, as well as the world beyond our experience, other realities and other visions.
What’s the worst thing about photography?
That there so much of it. Our culture is so inundated with photographs that they can become the visual equivalent of background noise
What’s the thing that interests you most about other people’s photographs?
The way they see and interpret their world. Their unique visions show me things I could not imagine, and present new conceptual pathways to follow.
What benefits do you get from (this/these) other art form/s?
Poetry helps me to be visually sensitive to the possibility of metaphor in an image; it helps me appreciate photographs as visual poems.
Writing helps me to more fully explore and understand ideas and concepts.
Making sculptural assemblages is a tactile and three-dimensional way to explore ideas through the combination of different materials and found objects. This work often directly influences my “Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin” series of photographs.
What failure did you learn the most from?
No particular failure, but the general idea that in any failure there is an opportunity to learn something, to take that knowledge, start again, and do it better.
Read the rest of Sean’s answers here.
Read other photographers answers to the same questions here.
Find out more about Sean Duggan here.
Find more Photographers On Photography resources here.
Sean Kernan provides quick candid answers to 20 questions.
What’s the best thing about gear?
It’s poetic sense of capability and precision.
What’s the worst thing about gear?
It can seduce you into thinking you can take good photographs if you have it.
How do you know when an image doesn’t work?
When it merely describes a surfaec but is not in itself alive.
How do you know when an image is good?
When it takes me into some new space or understanding, beyond photography.
How do you know when an image is great?
When it smacks me and enlarges me at once, and then does it again when I see it 20 years later.
What’s the most useful photographic mantra?
Shoot first, ask questions later.
Do you practice another art form? (If so, which?)
Chinese calligraphy, video.
What benefits do you get from (this/these) other art form/s?
From calligraphy, a very acute sense of the role of space, of emptiness. From video, a sense of time that is quite like music.
Read the more of Sean’s answers here.
Read answers to the same questions by other photographers here.
Learn more about Sean Kernan here.
Read my Photographers On Photography conversation with Sean here.
Phil Borges provides quick candid answers to 20 questions.
What’s the best thing about photography?
Photography has been the key that has let me enter cultural worlds very different from my own.
How do you know when an image is great?
You can feel it. It moves you emotionally.
What’s the most useful photographic mantra?
‘Get closer’.
What failure did you learn the most from?
Losing my cool with difficult people. It always fails.
What’s the best thing about influence?
You can bring about change.
What’s the worst thing about influence?
Change isn’t always good.
What’s the best thing about our times?
Technology.
What’s the worst thing about our times is?
Technology.
What is your most marked characteristic?
Persistence.
What do you most value in your friends?
Humor, authenticity.
Read the rest of Phil’s answers here.
Learn more about Phil Borges here.
Find Phil’s books here.
Find out about Phil’s latest project / book Tibet : Culture On the Edge here.
Watch Phil’s TED presentation here.
Read answers to the same questions by other photographers here.
Read my series Photographers On Photography here.
Seth Resnick provides quick candid answers to 20 questions.
What’s the thing that interests you most about photography?
Trying to create something that someone standing next to me would not see
What’s the thing that interests you most about your own photographs?
Recognizing that I have my own unique style
What’s the thing that interests you most about other people’s photographs?
Their interpretation of their mind’s eye
How do you know when an image doesn’t work?
Instant gut feeling
How do you know when an image is good?
When it makes you stop to study it
How do you know when an image is great?
When you can always remember it
Read the rest of Seth’s answers here.
Read how other photographers answer the same questions here.
Find out more about Seth Resnick here.
Sean Duggan and I discuss the benefits of becoming more aware of your creative process.
Find out more about Sean Duggan here.
Find more Photographers On Photography resources here.
Catch us both at Foto Clave this weekend.
Arthur Meyerson provides quick candid answers to 20 questions.
What’s the best thing about photography?
Taught me how to “see”.
What’s the worst thing about photography?
We are inundated with photographs… not enough vision.
What’s the best thing about gear?
Allows me to capture what I see
What’s the worst thing about gear?
Weight, cost and continually thinking I need to upgrade plus the never-ending conversation about gear
What was the most significant visual moment in your life?
I once had a dream in slide show form and each still image “came alive” becoming a dream within a dream.
Which was the most important image to you that got away?
Spending a day with Cartier-Bresson and NOT photographing him.
Read more of Arthur’s answers here.
Find out more about Arthur Meyerson here.
Read answers to the same questions by other photographers here.
Read my extended conversation with Arthur Meyerson here.
Read my series Photographers On Photography here.
Gary Braasch has photographed climate change more extensively than any other photographer. His book Earth Under Fire is a definitive work on the subject.
Find out about Gary Braasch here.
Find out about Earth Under Fire here.
Gary and I have been talking at length on many subjects. Here’s the second installment of our conversations.
John Paul Caponigro
What recommendations do you have for the average citizen to start taking a more active role with respect to these issues? What would you suggest to other photographers to increase the effectiveness of their advocacy efforts?
Gary Braasch
The people I met on my climate change documentary project really mean something to me. Beyond all the scientists and local guides, at this point those who mean the most are the ones who are living with the change but did not cause it … Read More