Miguel Syjuco Quotes

I love movies where people see the world from a different angle.

It's seldom you make a great picture. you have to milk the cow quite a lot to get plenty of milk to make a little cheese.

I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.

I enjoy very much seeing a good photographer working. There’s an elegance, just like in a bullfight.

I know that I put a lot into 'Hereditary', and I'm proud of what it is. Beyond the fact that the film takes its time and asks for a certain amount of patience from the audience - and I hope it rewards that patience by the end - I know that I'm something of an aesthete. I care about aesthetics, and I love filmmaking.

Moving pictures can be and will be new and fresh and exciting as long as there are ideas and talent in the world.

It's a way of living, cinema. And I see my family, I do this and that, I travel. It's a long process to let it happen.

That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called "Your photographs: Better."

There are two kinds of photographers: those who compose pictures and those who take them. The former work in studios. For the latter, the studio is the world... For them, the ordinary doesn't exist: every thing in life is a source of nourishment.

The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a poet.

We worked on The Perfect Storm, and I'll never forget, Wolfgang Petersen would talk about a moment. Like a non-speaking moment, where we'd all be sitting around eating dinner, and it would probably last maybe four seconds on screen. But he would sit there and talk about it for about 10 minutes. He knew what piece of the puzzle that scene would be, and if it were six seconds, it would be too long. If it were three seconds, it wouldn't be enough. I'm always turned on with people's enthusiasm like that.

I'm proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story - it's casting, editing, cinematography.

The camera cannot, but the photographer can.

For as long as I've been making movies, I really don't know a lot of the technical side. I mean, I've actively and consciously tried to avoid learning that stuff. I just want to be open and receptive to what's happening in the moment, and I don't want to force anything.

I know what to do with the camera because I see the giant in the camera when I'm operating it live on the set.

Photography is 1% talent and 99% moving furniture.

I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs. Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he 'uncovers' it.

If the guy behind the camera is not good, the pictures are bad. It's still you, and it's the same lines and everything, but it doesn't work.

Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.

I want my photographs not only to be real but to portray the essence of my subjects also. In order to do that, you have to be patient.

If I have an idea I want to put in a movie, I know what camera will make that look best, and I have ideas for future projects and stuff I'd like to build for those. I think it's just part of how I work, though.

The photographer's art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time.

I'm a very, very basic photographer. The main strength of my pictures, I guess, is the mood and feel I get out of the people that I meet. But technically I don't think I'm very advanced. That never interested me.

You wait until life is in the frame, then you have the permission to click. I like the adventure of waiting until the whole frame is full.

Making photos is helpful of course to master the craft. To get comfortable with the camera. Learn what a camera can do and how to use the camera successfully. Doing exercises for example if you try to find out things that the camera can do that the eye cannot do. So that you have a tool that will do what you need to be done. But then once you have mastered the craft the most important thing is to determine why you want to shoot pictures and what you want to shoot pictures of. That's where the thematic issue comes to life.