Never boss people around. It's more important to click with people than to click the shutter.
Alfred EisenstaedtRead
People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result. I can stand in front of a leaf with a dew drop, or a rain drop, and stay there for ages just waiting for the right moment. Sure, people think I'm crazy, but who cares? I see more than they do!
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the often unseen effort and patience behind creating a great photograph, highlighting the photographer's unique perspective.
Alfred Eisenstaedt's quote reflects on the dedication and patience required in photography that is often overlooked by others. While observers only see the final beautiful image, they fail to appreciate the time, observation, and stillness that the photographer invests to capture that perfect moment. The photographer's ability to wait, often perceived as eccentric by others, reveals a deeper understanding and connection to the subject, showcasing their artistic vision.
Themes
PhotographyPatienceArtPerspectiveDedication
In practice
Example use cases
In a photography class, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of patience in capturing the right moment.
More from Alfred Eisenstaedt
All quotes →Today's photographers think differently. Many can't see real light anymore. They think only in terms of strobe - sure, it all looks beautiful but it's not really seeing. If you have the eyes to see it, the nuances of light are already there on the subject's face. If your thinking is confined to strobe light sources, your palette becomes very mean - which is the reason I photograph only in available light.
Alfred EisenstaedtRead
I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.
Alfred EisenstaedtRead
Retire? Retire from What? Life? I will only retire when I am dead!
Alfred EisenstaedtRead
I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.
Alfred EisenstaedtRead
Yes, I sold buttons to earn living. But I took pictures to keep on living. Pictures are my life – as necessary as eating or breathing.
Alfred EisenstaedtRead
Similar quotes
An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.
Michael HanekeRead
I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name.
John Le CarreRead
Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice.
Martin AmisRead
Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.
Rebecca WestRead
Film should be looked at straight on; it is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.
Werner HerzogRead
I believe in previous lives and the Muse—and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists.
Steven PressfieldRead