Sally Mann Quotes

If your pictures are not good enough, it’s because you are not close enough.

You start blocking out things, and that's a really important part of taking a picture is the ability to isolate what you're - what you're concentrating on.

I'm just interested in what makes a photograph.

...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.

There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them... It was my teacher Lisette Model who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it will be.

Nobody takes photographs, photographs take you.

I go straight in very close to people and I do that because it's the only way you can get the picture. You go right up to them. Even now, I don't find it easy. I don't announce it. I pretend to be focusing elsewhere. If you take someone's photograph it is very difficult not to look at them just after. But it's the one thing that gives the game away. I don't try and hide what I'm doing - that would be folly.

The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.

There are things that I teach, about building photographs, and that's why people come to my workshops. When people come to the workshops, they're consumed with seeking the subject, and I teach seeking the setting.

With a camera, one has to love individual cases.

You can't have the finest buildings if they're not in focus. They become like nice cars parked on the street.

The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer.

It is good to be in front of the lens to appreciate more being behind the lens.

I love the luxury of the camera. The camera does so much for you. I like the secrets a camera can tell.

My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.

With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.

I always wanted to know what lens they were on, how close they were. I didn't do it with a plan in mind, but I would instinctively gear what I was doing toward what lenses they were using.

At extreme distances, there is essentially no such thing as depth of field.

I have a low-tech camera with one lens that I've shot everything in my life on. My subjects and my subject matter sometimes really are powerful, and so my job is to get it into focus.

To take photographs is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis

Sometimes I have taken photographs and just felt so excited that I could barely hold the camera steady, and the photo was boring.

One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.

Everything becomes closer once you realize that the world is only as far away as a nap and a meal.

The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.