Sebastiao Salgado Quotes

If you look at photojournalism, it's largely driven by current events... always chasing a crisis or disaster. I follow a narrative that is much looser than current events.

Photographers do more assignments than reporters do, so they know their communities better.

Photography can be a powerful instrument for change, and photojournalists can tell stories that make a difference.

If you've got a camera, go to a war zone and tell a story.

I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film.

Photography must be integrated with the story.

My job is to take the pictures, communicate a message, to bring those images to the greater public through whatever publication I'm working for. My job is really to be a messenger, and that's what I've been doing.

I became obsessed with the storytelling of photography and going on little adventures.

I don't believe in one slow panning-shot to show a place. It should unfurl in the story itself.

I'm trying to grow more as a journalist and understand the story I'm photographing in order to communicate it in a better way.

A big part of directing animation is deciding what you really want to do and making sure it's about something. My favorite thing about animation is the storytelling. You can really dig into the story and spend time with the writers. The writers don't just write and leave.

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

Directing is all about storytelling. It's not about equipment, or anything else.

It is a great honor for me to be compared to Henri Cartier-BressonBut I believe there is a very big difference in the way we put ourselves inside the stories we photograph. He always strove for the decisive moment as being the most important. I always work for a group of pictures, to tell a story. If you ask which picture in a story I like most, it is impossible for me to tell you this. I don't work for an individual picture. If I must select one individual picture for a client, it is very difficult for me.

The big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what’s the right way to tell a particular story.

I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.

I did it [photojournalism] as something that was really rewarding to do, given the opportunity to express myself about something I cared about, and also to learn a lot by watching filmmakers I admired. In a sense, it was my film school. After doing it for a few years, I decided that the time had come to get it together and do some work of my own. So I stopped doing that and wrote some screenplays on speculation, because even though I wanted to direct, to direct you need a lot of money.

A lot of shows are more script-driven, like a prose script. As an actor, you never see a storyboard.

What you're normally doing as a writer is trying to find the narrative.

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

When you're making a film you're thinking about how to tell the story visually.

My filmmaking background has really just been making movies with my friends since I was 12 years old. That's how I feel I learned how to tell a story visually, by just going out with a video camera and making movies with my friends and family.

As a storyteller, I think where working in television can almost be like lifting weights - you really have to know what your story is about.

I so love the animation process. Interesting, everything that I do in animation, the kind of crafting and skills of storytelling, totally work within the structure of the Disney nature films. In a weird way, I like to think that animation is like painting, and Disney nature is like sculpting. Animation you start with a blank canvas and you paint. With Disney nature, you start with a big block of imagery and you hone it down into your final story. Somewhere you end up with something kind of pretty to watch.

I compose the frame literally with the camera. Unless it makes a story point.