Ann Beattie Quotes

I felt like I was in the best photography school in the world - I had Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn teach me.

There's no photo-shoot academy. If there was, I'd probably be kicked out.

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years.

I'm not very good with stills. I get all twitchy.

I went to - I got a wonderful college education. I went to Harvard. In those four years, I accumulated a lot of knowledge, but I also created a kind of habit of learning that has stayed with me my whole life.

There have been so many photographers and editors who mentored me over the years. At the very beginning, the person who taught me the most was Arthur Elgort. I always loved working with him. We traveled a lot together.

At Harvard, I majored in English Literature.

I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace.

I think that it's workshops, honestly, that have kept me keen about photography, and about my photography. My career as a workshop photographer came while I was at the Geographic in the late 70's, and has continued consistently since then.

My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.

One of the many ways of contesting level-zero, and one of the best, is to take photographs, an activity in which one should start becoming adept very early in life, teach it to children since it requires discipline, aesthetic education, a good eye and steady fingers.

If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

We could teach photography as a way to make a living, and best of all, somehow to get students to experience for themselves photography as a way of life.

I don't roam around with a camera and never did. I took pictures in spurts, for my books, for some assignments or on special occasions. Like people who take out their cameras for Christmas and birthdays. Each time, like them, probably, I feel it’s the first time and as if I would have to relearn the moves. Luckily, it comes pretty fast, like riding a bike.

I too turned to Webster's Dictionary and it defined Harvard University as a season for gathering crops.

The important thing is not the camera but the eye.

I used to teach. I quote American history and I love words. I've read the dictionary I don't know how many times throughout my life. People say, "You read the dictionary?" I say, "Yes, and you can really believe it."

I think the camera is a wonderful machine, don't you? And not to take photographs in this century is crazy.

The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good.

The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

None of us is born with the right face. It’s a tough job being a portrait photographer.

Work harder, get closer and be passionate about what you photograph.

In the beginning I was really, really lean. For the longest time I did it all. I played every hat. I was in the factory, doing the graphic design, the photography, the selling - literally everything. I saved money doing what I could myself. It was hard but I learned. I learned that nobody's better than you to get your business off the ground. The experience you get is priceless.

I'm pretty fast with a camera when I have to be. However, I think it's irrelevant.