Quotes About Camera

Once a photographer is convinced that the camera can lie and that, strictly speaking, the vast majority of photographs are camera lies, inasmuch as they tell only part of a story or tell it in distorted form, half the battle is won. Once he has conceded that photography is not a naturalistic medium of rendition and that striving for naturalism in a photograph is futile, he can turn his attention to using a camera to make more effective pictures.

All I kept thinking about was, "Man, he's so relaxed onstage! I'm never going to be that relaxed! I'm clearly not meant to be in front of the camera. I'm really not meant for anything but behind the camera."

The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.

How I wished I'd have had a camera of my own, a mad mental camera that could register pictorial shots, of the photographic artist himself prowling about for his ultimate shot - an epic in itself. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958)

I found it liberating to sing on camera. On stage, you have to indicate having a thought, and the word you are singing must indicate it as well, but on camera, you can have ideas, you can take in all the stimuli that the character would be taking in, there's a freedom you get, and you don't have the obligation to transmit each idea to the back of the house. It felt so much closer to reality for me.

Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition. Richard Burton said that Taylor showed him how to act for the camera. Economy and understatement are essential. At her best, Elizabeth Taylor simply is. An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extra-sensory, pagan phenomenon.

Because of the way that I work with the actors and because a scene is not in this rigid and literal interpretation of something written, I can constantly change stuff, which means I can get a scene absolutely perfect, and then when we go to shoot it, the requirements of the shot mean it would be useful to extend the dialogue or take a line out or swap things around. So the camera doesn't serve the action. The action serves the camera. That's important. So it becomes more and more organic and integrated.

You're talking about a whole camera crew and being mic'd up professionally everyday and just having another group of people following you around. It's a little different than having friends pick up a camera and follow you around.

The camera is objective. When it records a face it can't make any hierarchical decisions about a nose being more important than a cheek. The camera is not aware of what it is looking at. It just gets it all down.

Sometimes people don't rehearse at all, but you might have had a chance to rehearse for a few days, or even more than that. Then in the moment when the camera's running is the only time it matters. So whatever you've discussed or thought about or discussed with the director, the other actors, hopefully there's a part of the experience that you've left open so that only in that moment the camera catches it. That's of course the hardest thing to do because everything is planned and you have thought about it in advance.

I feel like God has moved me into a different way of doing things. I teach basic on-camera acting class called Acting 101...In my classroom, the students get every ounce of encouragement and craft and anything I'm able to give them.We have some rules. We don't take the name of The Lord in vain. We don't use foul language when we mess up on camera...There's a climate of safety...They feel very protected.

Photographs also show the way that the camera sees. It's not just me or you or anybody else. The camera does something that is different from our own setting.

Anyone who looks for life can find it... and they don't need to photograph ashcans. The average camera fan reminds me of Pollyanna, with a lollypop in one hand and a camera in the other. You can't be a Nice Nelly and take news pictures.

We were using a hand-held camera to film the scene when Morse collapses. The camera wouldn't start. Three times they said action and it still wouldn't work. To this day, they still don't know what was wrong.

Before the days of video village a director should stand right next to the camera, look with his naked eye and if he sees something that is real to him, he'd look up at the [camera] operator and if he gives the look to indicate he'd seen it to, then you print and you'd move on.

After you play husband and wife on camera multiple times, it becomes easy to be husband and wife off camera as well.

I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.

Of course, the camera is a far more objective and trustworthy witness than a human being. We know that a Brueghel or Goya or James Ensor can have visions or hallucinations, but it is generally admitted that a camera can photograph only what is actually there, standing in the real world before its lens.

It is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite.

I don't stand behind the camera drooling. Knowing that, the models are more likely to open up and relax.

I know every actor says this, but the people behind the camera are great. They always have answers.

Working in front of the camera keeps me alive.

Photos should focus on your waist up, unless you have amazing legs. Then it's okay to include one or two full-body shots in your gallery. The majority of your photos should be closer up, highlighting your face. Don't stage a smile. Instead, try to laugh just before the shot is taken. Flirty smiles that don't look cheesy also work. Make eye contact with the camera. Aim to take most of your photos outdoors.

I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense.

I remember they did all the makeup tests on me for Darla... Sorry, for "the vampire." I was the test monkey for the vampire look, so I went through numerous variations of the prosthetics and camera tests before I actually got the job.

Before each new setup, I chase everyone off the set in order to be alone and look through the camera. In that moment, the film seems quite easy. But then the others come in and everything becomes difficult.

The work I enjoy is when the camera rolls, and I like the work in the moment.

I'd come up with one leg in theater, but never my first leg. I loved the camera too much.

I prefer working behind the camera.

Human vision is untrustworthy, subjective and selective. Camera vision is total and non - objective.

That was an interesting thing I learned I think the first time I did a late night show or something. It was like, "Oh, this is for the camera and a performance that you're giving to the people at home."

There's something essentially fictive about a photograph. That doesn't mean that if you understand that, and you understand how the world is transformed by the camera, that you can't use the limitations or the transformation to have an observation that is a very subtle perception of the world.

I think you should do rehearsal and work at it, but when the camera rolls, you should be ready. Try to make it good the first time.

Since a camera is something too heavy for women and initially made for men, you need a good cameraman.

I love it, to have the same crew. I'm not married. I don't have children. My 17-year-old dog died. I'm kind of on my own. So I really like having the same camera guy for four years. I love looking around and seeing the hair and makeup people who have been there from the beginning.

I went to USC and tried to learn about the other side of the camera a little bit.

Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people who take pictures, you know, carry a camera. Because if I did I'd have stack's and stack's and stack's of different act's. I got a lot here - I know what I done.

Kathie Lee [Gifford] invited me to come to New York for lunch with her - and surprised with an unexpected shout out again for One Thousand Gifts on the show and graciously asked a few questions on camera. Indebted to her and the people who read and looked for Jesus in the pages and shared the hope and joy of Him - right where they are.

It is important to understand what are you trying to capture with a camera. What you want to use this tool for. It helps to begin to search for and concentrate on thematic photography.

The close-up has no equivalent in a narrative fashioned of words. Literature is totally lacking in any working method to enable it to isolate a single vastly enlarged detail in which one face comes forward to underline a state of mind or stress the importance of a single detail in comparison with the rest. As a narrative device, the ability to vary the distance between the camera and the object may be a small thing indeed, but it makes for a notable difference between cinema and oral or written narrative, in which the distance between language and image is always the same.

I don't like to move the camera that much anyway.

I feel like an artist often turns the camera on themselves and on their own families to understand who they are.

I was at a Madonna show many, many years ago and I was in the sweet spot and she came out and I mean it was the best part of the show. And I was shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. And I'm like, "God, I must have shot a hundred pictures have I not run out of film?" And I opened the back of my camera and there was no film in there. So that happened to me only once.

Michael Moore and I actually have a lot in common. We both appreciate living in a country where there's free expression. But Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera, I'll kill you. I mean it.

Our job as actors, especially in front of a camera, is almost like textile artists. We spend so much time getting the right texture of yarn, and working out the color scheme, and binding off the weave, and making it just right.

I grew up as a photo nut. Every Christmas I would get a new camera. It's a huge part of my life.

My great joy in working on anything is stepping out in front of the camera and working with the actors.

After directing the first film it feels kind of tricky being back to being in front of the camera, because I've always got one eye over there, kind of thinking of what they are doing, and how the shot is being composed. I think it takes a couple of films to just get back to just being an actor.