22 Great Quotes By Duane Michals
Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Duane Michals.
“Trust that little voice in your head that says ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if…’; And then do it.” – Duane Michals
“Don’t try to be an artist. Find the thing within you that needs to be expressed. You might find it is art.” – Duane Michals
“I am an expressionist and by that I mean that I’m not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.” – Duane Michals
“People believe in the reality of photographs, but not in the reality of paintings. That gives photographers an enormous advantage. Unfortunately, photographers also believe in the reality of photographs.” – Duane Michals
“Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.” – Duane Michals
“I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I’m not interested in what things look like.” – Duane Michals
“You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he’s in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin?” – Duane Michals
“Because of my involvement with my photographs, it is difficult for me really to see them objectively. Talking about them is like talking about myself. The only real idea that I have about them is that they are essentially snapshots. For snapshots, I feel, often have an inherent simplicity and directness that I find beautiful. The roots of my photographs are in this tradition.” – Duane Michals
“However, I think that the photographer must completely control his picture and bring to it all his personality, and in this area most photographs never transcend being just snapshots. When a great photographer does infuse the snapshot with his personality and vision, it can be transformed into something truly moving and beautiful.” – Duane Michals
“The best part of us is not what we see, it’s what we feel. We are what we feel. We are not what we look at . . .. We’re not our eyeballs, we’re our mind. People believe their eyeballs and they’re totally wrong . . .. That’s why I consider most photographs extremely boring–just like Muzak, inoffensive, charming, another waterfall, another sunset. This time, colors have been added to protect the innocent. It’s just boring. But that whole arena of one’s experience–grief, loneliness–how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see. It’s all sitting up here. I could do all my work sitting in my room. I don’t have to go anywhere.” – Duane Michals
“I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn’t tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.” – Duane Michals
“Photography does deal with ‘truth’ or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality – it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?” – Duane Michals
“I believe in the invisible. I do not believe in the definitive reality of things around us. For me, reality is the intuition and the imagination and the quiet voice inside my head that says: isn’t that extraordinary? The things in our lives are the shadows of reality, just as we ourselves are shadows.” – Duane Michals
“Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we’re going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?” – Duane Michals
“I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” – Duane Michals
“Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.” – Duane Michals
“I use photography to help me explain my experiences to myself.” – Duane Michals
“I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody’s face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.” – Duane Michals
Duane Michals
“I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.” – Duane Michals
“All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way.” – Duane Michals
“Art is really whispering, not shouting.” – Duane Michals
“My gift to you is that I am different.” – Duane Michals
View 12 Great Photographs By Duane Michals.
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22 Quotes On Flow
Enjoy this collection of quotes on the state of flow.
“Let’s make things exist and then judge later. Don’t cancel the process of creativity too early: Let it flow.” – Ross Lovegrove
“One of my teachers once said that the way you know you’re on the right path is that it works. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t run into blocks and brick walls, but it does mean that you can find a way around them or find a way to change yourself or your project in order to find the flow again and have it work.” – James Redfield
“I live my life on self-believe and I live it partly on going with the flow.” – Melanie Brown
“Life is so much easier when I allow myself to be myself and go with the flow. Whatever that looks like on a given day. If I can get quiet enough to truly check in with myself, I usually end up on the right track.” – Taylor Schilling
“The most important part of life is work, it’s the flow, it’s getting stuff done, feeling like you’re doing something.” – Penn Jillette
“My hand does the work and I don’t have to think. In fact, were I to think, it would stop the flow. It’s like a dam in the brain that bursts.” – Edna O’Brien
“Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow.” – Paracelsus
“The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well.” – Jack Welch
“The self expands through acts of self-forgetfulness.” – Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
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How Frustration Makes Us More Creative – Tim Hartford @ TED
“Challenges and problems can derail your creative process … or they can make you more creative than ever. In the surprising story behind the best-selling solo piano album of all time, Tim Harford may just convince you of the advantages of having to work with a little mess.”
View more in the Essential Collection Of Creativity Videos
Learn more in my Creativity Workshops
5 Ways To Use Abstraction
1 – Simplify
2 – Clarify A Structure
3 – Show A Process
4 – Visualize A Concept
5 – Create A Pattern
To one degree or another, every photograph is abstract. At a minimum, photographs are flat rather than three-dimensional. Some photographs are more graphic than others, and the origins of a few photographs are virtually unrecognizable. Determining to what degree a photograph is abstract, how it is abstract, and why it’s abstract will help you understand more about it and its creator’s intentions; this might be you.
Abstraction can serve many functions: it can direct, structure, inform, and express.
Whether you use it a little or a lot, abstraction is a vehicle that can help you strengthen your stories and clarify your point of view. As every image is abstract to one degree or another, ultimately, the question is not whether you will use abstraction but how you will use abstraction in your images. Exploring abstraction is time will spent.
Read the full article on Craft & Vision.
Learn more in my creativity and digital photography workshops.
56 Great Quotes On Success
Enjoy this collection of quotes on Success.
“Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.” – Arnold H. Glasow
“For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.” – Harry F. Banks
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” – Zig Ziglar
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – Albert Schweitzer
“Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.” – David Frost
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
“The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.” Mark Caine
“Success is loving life and daring to live it.” – Maya Angelou
“The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.” Henry Ford
“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” – George Sheehan
“I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you. ” ― Oprah Winfrey
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Encore! Seymour An Introduction – Ethan Hawke
“Meet Seymour Bernstein: a beloved pianist, teacher and true inspiration who shares eye-opening insights from an amazing life. Ethan Hawke helms this poignant guide to life.”
Find Seymour An Introduction here.
View You & The Piano – 4 Lessons – Seymour Bernstein here.
View more in The Essential Collection Of Creativity Videos.
You & The Piano – 4 Lessons – Seymour Bernstein
Seymour Bernstein’s philosophy that playing beautifully starts with living beautifully, extends the wisdom of his music lessons into every creative discipline – and to everyone.
View more on the documentary Seymour An Introduction.
View more in The Essential Collection Of Creativity Videos.
26 Quotes On Personal Callings
Enjoy this collection of quotes on personal Callings.
“I believe there’s a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.” ― Oprah Winfrey
“Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have not a goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in striving toward an important goal.”– Maxwell Maltz
“We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.”– Abraham Maslow
“We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.”– Sir Walter Scott
“I have brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.”– Benjamin Disraeli
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius
“Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.” – Virgil
“Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind. Someone is thinking of the way your breath escapes your lips when you are touched. How your eyes close and your jaw tightens with concentration as you give pleasure a home. These thoughts are saving a life somewhere right now. In some airless apartment on a dark, urine stained, whore lined street, someone is calling out to you silently and you are answering without even being there. So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have.” – Henry Rollins
“Most of us would like to end our lives feeling both that we had a good time and that we left the world a little better than we found it.”– Philip Slater
“The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared… to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.”– Shirley Hufstedler
“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”– Harvey S. Firestone
“The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish.” – William Osler
“Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color.” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” ― Émile Zola
“I don’t tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of ’04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don’t wake up at 32 or 35 or 40 tenured to a life that happened to you when you weren’t paying strict attention, either because the money was good, or it made your parents proud, or because you were unlucky enough to discover an aptitude for the very thing that bores you to tears, or for any of the other semi-valid reasons people marshal to justify allowing the true passion of their lives to leak away. If you’re lucky, you may have more than one chance to get things right, but second and third chances, like second and third marriages, can be dicey propositions, and they don’t come with guarantees…. The question then is this: How does a person keep from living the wrong life?” ― Richard Russo
“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.” ― Annie Dillard
“My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.” ― Wendell Berry
“If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?” ― Stephen King
“Change makes you find your calling, your legacy, and God’s divine plan for your life. Don’t run from it.” – Iman
“Whatever your calling is as a service, follow it – that’s beautiful.” – Hill Harper
“Every calling is great when greatly pursued.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
“…it sounds like life is calling you to do something BIG and you haven’t picked up the phone.”– Anonymous
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”– Henry David Thoreau
“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.”– Henry David Thoreau
“Let us become the change we seek in this world.”– Mohandas Gandhi
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33 Great Quotes On Excellence
Enjoy this collection of quotes on excellence.
“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” – Booker T. Washington
“We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.” – Barack Obama
“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.” – John Steinbeck
“He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become.” – James Allen
“It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” – W. Somerset Maugham
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