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)

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

The camera cannot leave the man, but the man can leave the camera. It's in the style of documentary where you make an agreement between a camera and a man and say, "I'm going to film you now."

Under examination by the camera, a human body becomes for its inhabitant a field of betrayal more than a ground of communication, and the camera's further power is manifested as it documents the individual's self-conscious efforts to control the body each time it is conscious of the camera's attention to it.

I don't want to carry big things around with me. I'm lazy. The snapshot camera, you just carry it around and take the picture. You don't need to think about anything. People in the street are not going to wait for you with a big camera. They would freak out. With a snapshot camera, they are comfortable.

The film camera's ability to physically move through space, not zoom through space - every time we have a video camera the movement is through zoom; every time we have a film camera it is a physical movement.

For me, what was important was to record everything I saw around me, and to do this as methodically as possible. In these circumstances a good photograph is a picture that comes as close as possible to reality. But the camera never manages to record what your eyes see, or what you feel at the moment. The camera always creates a new reality.

I like the ending of the movie [War Horse], simply because it's such a demanding scene emotionally, and yet [the look] is all done on camera. I like the work not to be manipulated digitally. And it's all done on camera [in that scene].

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.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

I used to always love taking photos, but I would always give a camera away to someone else. Now I don't give the camera away anymore. It also takes a long time to develop a visual style, and I think that the things that I was imitating were people I love, like Judy Linn or Gerald Turner, and then it slowly started to become more myself.

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.

Photography today is accomplishing a lofty mission in which every German should collaborate by buying a camera. The German people is ahead of every other in the technical domain and, thanks to its exceptional qualities, the small camera has conquered the whole world... Much is at stake here from the point of view of popular consumer goods and, furthermore, photography has a particularly important political role to play. (Addressing the Berlin Photography Fair, 1933)

So the thing that's beautiful about the Rolleiflex is that I open the camera up from the top and put my face in and that the camera's all about composition and all about light.

The fact that I have a little ten-megapixel camera with me all the time, is way better than having the greatest camera in the world sitting at home on a desk instead of on my shoulder.

We're so conditioned to the syntax of the camera that we don't realize that we are running on only half the visual alphabet... It's what we see every day in the magazines, on billboards and even on television. All those images are being produced basically the same way, through a lens and a camera. I'm saying there are many, many other ways to produce photographic imagery, and I would imagine that a lot of them have yet to be explored.

So in terms of a large part of the job on our show specifically, what makes the show complex and interesting and funnier are the conversations about "Where's the camera?" and "How aware are the characters of the camera? Are the cameras hidden for this shot? Is it a spy shot from far away? Or is it really close and in their face, and they sort of have to play to it in an embarrassing situation?" There's a whole other level of questions and choices that come into play on our show that are not even a factor in anything else.

I think that film is still an artform and it doesn't really matter if you're using a digital camera or a film camera.

A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart.

Every photograph is a realization of one of the possibilities contained within the program of the camera. The number of such possibilities is large, but it is nevertheless finite. It is the sum of all those photographs that can be taken by a camera.

whether they'll write the story of my life as a tragedy or an epic fantasy... I was wondering if it was going to be a kiss at the end, or sad music and a sweeping camera shot over the fields I once roamed freely. I'm hoping for the kiss, but expecting the sweeping camera shot.

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.

Every photograph that is made whether by one who considers himself a professional, or by the tourist who points his snapshot camera and pushes a button, is a response to the exterior world, to something perceived outside himself by the person who operates 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.

This is the funny thing about Skype. No one is really looking into the camera. People always looking down because they're looking at the image. You wish the camera was there in the center.

In animation, there's silly things I get to do with my voice. I get to have a wider range, so my voice gets to dance more than it does on camera.

Working in front of the camera keeps me alive.

You can start a documentary with just a camera, as opposed to a fiction film where you need actors, a crew, a script, a lot more start-up resources. It may be self-perpetuating.

Memory is a tenuous thing, like a rainbow's end or a camera with a failing lens.

I always try to create equal power between the subject and the object, so as not to end up creating a relationship where the camera is here and the object out there. This is for me a very difficult and sensitive balance. When I produce a work, cut and frame images, I realize that spectators can identify with the images and almost forget that someone else actually made them. This would be the optimal situation. I don't know whether I succeed in doing so, but that's what I would like to have happen.

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.

Although I was entirely relaxed on camera, if I had to stand up and say something to an assembled group of people, I was rendered all but inarticulate.

I remember like that scene with Pharrell where they're at the music video shoot, we have this on camera actually, Pharrell's confused because we weren't doing the script. We were doing all this improv and then Diddy says to him... Pharrell's like I don't understand what's going on and Diddy goes, "We do a lot of improv". (laughter) I remember being we just made him into a comedy nerd. We somehow turned Sean Combs into a comedy nerd, so.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

You have to think of each stage of the movie and how it progresses, get into the state of mind of the character, and then match the camera to that, and keep making it tighter and tighter and crazier and crazier so people don't get bored. You know you cannot do a similar shot that you did at the beginning of the movie at the end.

When you're in front of the camera, for a small budget or a big budget movie, there's no difference.

Sometimes you just create a joke out of thin air in the editing room. I'm really glad I've had that experience. It gives me a little more confidence in front of the camera.

I had gotten rid of the crying when I got to high school, though it happened again when I was a junior. We lost in the state championship. It was kind of the same situation, camera in my face, and then that's when I realized it was over I had my moment.

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."

Men still control the news, both on and off camera.

When the camera starts to roll, there is something of death about it.

I never go to a gym unless I have to for a role, a contract. I try to take care of myself as a human being, not because I have to be in front of the camera.

I like the smell of film. I just like knowing there's film going through the camera.

The camera is interested in what you are thinking as opposed to just what you are doing or saying.

There is no one who can stop you; you find a mic, a crowd, a set of ears, and nowadays, a camera and YouTube, and you recite your poem. You have your say. I don't want to over-romanticize it: of course, any time an art form ascends, especially when competition is involved, there will be gatekeeping, chauvinism, and other unfortunate dynamics. But the beauty of spoken word and performance poetry is, by and large, its ability to reach people in the moment - right there, right then.

The most important piece of equipment after the camera is a good pair of shoes.

I think I was very shy and introverted when I was younger, and yet, when I got in front of the camera or went out on the town, I was able to go out half-naked and do anything.

You have to really think about what kind of guy the character is and decide on a style that works, that complements my physicality and that's going to be believable, but also be compelling for the audience and for the camera.