Photographers speak...

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. Dorothea Lange

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph. Annie Leibovitz

Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures. Don McCullin

I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job. Don McCullin

Sometimes walking down the street, wanting to make a picture, I would be so anticipatory, so anxious, that I would just have to fire the camera, to let fly a picture, in order to release the energy, so that I could recock it. Joel Meyerowitz

Photography is a response that has to do with the momentary recognition of things. Suddenly you're alive. A minute later there was nothing there. I just watched it evaporate. You look one moment and there's everything, next moment it's gone. Photography is very philosophical. Joel Meyerowitz

I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated. James Nachtwey

The fundamental belief in the authenticity of photographs explains why photographs of people no longer living and of vanished architecture are so melancholy. Beaumont Newhall

Visual ideas combined with technology combined with personal interpretation equals photography. Each must hold it's own; if it doesn't, the thing collapses. Arnold Newman

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants. Arnold Newman

You learn to see by practice. It's just like playing tennis, you get better the more you play. The more you look around at things, the more you see. The more you photograph, the more you realize what can be photographed and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it. Eliot Porter