Quotes About Camera

Look, I really do not care about you. What I care about is the worlds that you bear witness to. You are nothing more than a dog with a video camera strapped on its back. As you walk the streets looking for a place to mate or piss or eat, the camera is on and we will see the world because of you... You carry the camera and we enjoy the world. (On images as autobiography)

Once you change the technology - from a film camera to a video camera, or from an 8-mm camera to 16 mm - you change completely the content. With 8 mm, a leaf on a tree will be made up of maybe four grains. So it's very impressionistic, almost like Seurat. If you switch to 16 mm, the technology gives you hundreds of grains on that leaf.

I can use the camera to make a place or landscape; the camera to a greater extent projects rather than takes in or reproduces. The camera, or, rather, the eye, produces the impression of the place: I as a photographer am not passively taking in; I am active as a subject generating the object.

I've been acting since I was 2 and have always been on camera but doing a video is different because when you're acting, you pretend the camera's not there and you just do the scene and with a music video you're right in the camera so it feels weird sometimes.

I could take a cow and implant a camera in it and let it amble around the city or in its own domain (I say a cow because a human being I would not trust). If the camera was programmed to go off at an indeterminate series of moments, the samplings would be fantastic.

My creative process begins when I get out with the camera and interact with the world. A camera is truly a license to explore. There are no uninteresting things. There are just uninterested people.

I don't know if the camera likes me, but I do like the camera.

A camera is a camera, a shot is a shot, how you tell the story is the main thing.

I really trust the authenticity of real people and my job is to get them to be themselves in front of the camera. Often what happens is, you'll get a newcomer in front of the camera and they'll freeze up or they imitate actors or other performances that they've admired and so they stop becoming themselves. And so my job as the director is just to always return them to what I first saw in them, which was simply an uncensored human being.

When I was nine, I asked my Dad, ‘Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8-millimeter movie camera that’s in your drawer?’ And he goes, ‘Sure, take it.’ And I took it, and I started making movies with it, and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, ’ What you’re doing is a waste of time.’ Never….. I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system. So, if you’re out there and you’re listening, listen to me: If you wanna be creative, get out there and do it. It’s not a waste of time.

Most people assume because I'm an actor that's all I know about and care about, I'm actually a camera geek and a film geek. I grew up making short films the same time I was acting. For me, it's a motion picture, not a play. I'm just as interested in what the camera department is doing and world building through costume design and production design as I am in acting. I think all good directors do that whether they're an actor or not.

I just feel that I enjoy the work more than I ever have... or just as much certainly... I enjoy making films behind the camera equally to making them in front of the camera on all those years. I just enjoy it, that's all. I've been lucky enough to work in a profession that I have really liked and so I figured I'd just continue until someone hits me over the head and says "get out".

I've been working in Hollywood for a long time now in many different aspects in front of the camera, behind the camera, and I've worked with top executives, presidents of networks. I've worked all around. I see energy and what's around these studios and a lot of these offices. You don't get the high positions in these companies if you don't take advantage of other people in some way. I've seen that around. I've seen that around the studios, whether it's producers or whoever. Egos are there. Greed.

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.

I'm a film rat. I love being in front of a camera. I love being behind a camera. I love talking to the director. I love talking film.

I tried to keep both arts alive, but the camera won. I found that while the camera does not express the soul, perhaps a photograph can!

Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc...) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create

I'd been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years. And then, in 1970, when I first started directing, I if I could pull this off, I can some day just move in back of the camera and stay there.

There are photographic fanatics, just as there are religious fanatics. They buy a so-called candid camera there is no such thing: it’s the photographer who has to be candid, not the camera.

If I had to give advice to other photographers, I would first suggest quickly getting over the camera equipment questions. In my humble opinion, the make and format of a camera is ultimately low on the priority scale when it comes to making pictures.

I want my fellow citizens to wise up and stop falling for [war]. I try with my limited access, I'm not getting into Kabul with a camera, they're not letting me get into Benghazi with a camera. I do what I can with my flimsy American passport and a visa. The photos are a bit more heavy from Southern Sudan and Haiti and Cuba.

Some people say the camera loves me, the truth is, I love the camera.

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.

I've always been intimidated by the technicalities of taking photos, especially with a film camera - not just a point and shoot.

I'm gay. It feels so weird saying it on camera!

In the the late seventies and early eighties, I played background roles in thirty movies... Woody Allen movies, Scorsese films, you name it. Whatever was being shot in New York, I was doing stand-in and background work because I wanted to be close to the camera; I wanted to see what was going on.

No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want.

If it doesn't feel like a job and I'm learning something and getting that rush that I get, I don't care if it's behind a camera, on a TV set, or on the moon.

I definitely prefer the single camera better. For me it's the simple fact that I enjoy working in front of an audience, but when you're trying to create a suspension of disbelief it's much harder to do in front of audience because they become a partner. Moreso than that, they become in charge of the timing. From the simple, mechanical fact that you have to hold for their laughter. The actual timing of the scene is in the hands of the audience. As a control freak, I don't enjoy that as much as the ability to be able to control it in an edit room.

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 was really awful at auditions. There's something about sitting down and saying into the camera: "I'm Nina and this is the name of my agent." That makes me just die inside.

A good actor knows exactly what the camera wants, what the sound wants, where to find the light and how to tell a good through line and journey.

I am always surprised when I watch the weather report on German television. First they show the map of Europe and then the camera moves to the right. Then comes Kiev, then Moscow and then everything stops. This seems to be the West's view of us - of a wild Russia that begins past Moscow, a place one prefers not to see. This is a big mistake. The West must pay closer attention.

I don't pretend to make my photographs speak the truth of what Mexico is all about. But in its villages I can feel the way culture is changing, and it's fascinating to live through it and try to capture it on camera.

It's very disconcerting to have a camera shoved in your face. It's really discombobulating. If you're the least bit nervous you forget what you just said, you can't find your way through, you can't follow the logic of your own statements sometimes. It's a weird sensation. And I think that really helps to lock people in place.

I guess in my house when I was growing up, I was comfortable trying to be funny. And my dad, of course, it bugged him sometimes. He was trying to rest, and I was constantly trying to say something stupid to get a reaction. But I like doing these movies. You can do it in front of the camera and then it's over. I don't have to worry about being in front of too many people.

We worked six days a week [on the The Breakfast Club], so you have one day off. So on that Saturday night, it's not like we could all go out and have a drink because Molly [Ringwald ] and Michael [Hall] weren't old enough. And Ally [Sheedy] pretty much kept to herself. So Emilio and I, every Saturday night, would go into Chicago because we were shooting outside of Chicago in Des Plaines. It's so funny, because even though we might be adversaries in the film, we certainly weren't off-camera. He's a very funny guy.

I just happened to have my camera and be photographing my friends. It was totally innocent; there was no purpose to the photographs. There was a purity to them that wasn’t planned; it was realism.

I think the perception of me can be, you know, confused. But thats only because people only see that side of me when Im at work, in front of the camera. So they dont see Miranda at home; they dont see behind the scenes. They see the glamour of it all but they dont see Miranda standing barefoot in a dirty old house.

I think subconsciously you wanted to "fit in" to the TV and film world and unfortunately that meant being petite and skinny. The camera does add 10 pounds. It does affect your idea of normal. Essentially, though, my body-image issues weren't down to the industry alone. These were ideas I had from little events along the way of life.

If you choose your subject selectively - intuitively - the camera can write poetry.

It's kind of dangerous to cut in the camera, but that's the only way I know how to direct.

The photographer who attempts to fit happily into the world by using the traditional perspective of the camera will end up falling into the hole of the "idea" he has dug for himself.

Dreamland Studios then was my bedroom at my parents' house, mostly [starring] people who were in my high school. They look straight at the camera; they're uncomfortable doing it. So, are [early movies] good? No.

The photogram, or camera-less record of forms produced by light, which embodies the unique nature of the photographic process, is the real key to photography.

We gave each other a hug, [Richard Pryor] said how much he admired me, I said how much I admired him, and we started working the next morning, and we hit it off really well, and he taught me how to improvise on camera.

Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, "God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything." And then you see the close-up and it's so nuanced and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.