Quotes About Camera

The difference between an amateur and a professional photographer is that the amateur thinks the camera does the work. And they treat the camera with a certain amount of reverence. It is all about the kind of lens you choose, the kind of film stock you use… exactly the sort of perfection of the camera. Whereas, the professional the real professional – treats the camera with unutterable disdain. They pick up the camera and sling it aside. Because they know it’s the eye and the brain that count, not the mechanism that gets between them and the subject that counts.

While working with a camera crew supervising flight testing of advanced aircraft at Edward's Air Force Base, California, the camera crew filmed the landing of a strange disc object that flew in over their heads and landed on a dry lake nearby. A camera crewman approached the saucer, it rose up above the area and flew off at a speed faster than any known aircraft.

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.

When I got the camera on the shoulder, they give me a nickname. They call me 'the tripod' because I'm kind of short and kind of strong. So if I take the camera and I lock myself, you think that you're on a crane.

A man with a camera was always suspected of being a spy. Moreover, the Jews did not want to be photographed, due to a misunderstanding of the prohibition against making graven images (photography had not been invented when the Torah was written!). I was forced to use a hidden camera.

Do not be afraid of mistakes. They will be with you always,every time you put a camera to your eye. [If you] shoot safe, and don't at least occasionally court disaster, you are not trying. Time to hang up the camera.

When I first started, I would go to Weist-Barron, and I studied with Rita Litton and ACTeen. For teenagers, it's a really, really great school. We did a lot of on-camera stuff, so you see yourself and what you do on camera.

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.

If you can shoot well, all you need is a disposable, toy camera or a camera phone to create great work. If you're not talented, it doesn't matter if you buy a Nikon D3X or Leica; your work will still be uninspired.

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.

I know that I present very - they say that I present very, very calm and very, very smart, very articulate, elegant. Yeah. And I go, 'Brilliant teams of makeup and wardrobe happened to dress me and clothe me and put my face on and do my hair. And then these brilliant teams of writers give me words to speak. I just need to make sure that I have them all in this combination in my body, in my being, and then I get to do it on camera, in front of a brilliant team of camera workers who really know how to like me and make me sound good.' So I'm just really a dork in real life.

Onstage, I enjoy the thrill of live performance - there is no substitute for that rush. On camera I enjoy the crafting of a scene, the widespread creative marksmanship happening all around you for every second of footage. Onstage you can suddenly feel solitary, like it's all on your shoulders, while on camera you feel like there are so many people working with you on every shot. Those are each unique and gratifying challenges.

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.

Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

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'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.

Screen work always boils down to that moment between the camera and the actor or the actors. It always boils down to that, ultimately. You serve the camera.

There was actually a camera on your face. I don't know so much about the animation process but the camera was in our face so it could get expressions from our faces that would eventually arrive on the gnomes. It almost felt like you were cheating at times because it was a wee bit too much fun. You were in that box on your own. Kelly [Asbury] was in Toronto, I was in LA, so I was just on my own. I thought: "I can't be getting paid for this as well!"

When I was an actor in some movies a long time ago, I was so curious about all the camera movements - why is the camera placed here, and why does it move like this? And why the set and the background, the color? It's a lot of questions for me to ask, because I was so interested, not only in acting, but also the whole process of filmmaking.

The difference between a regular camera and a 3D camera, for an actor, is really no different except that the turn-arounds are longer. It takes a lot longer to set up a shot because the cinematographer is really trying to set up a whole world, so it can't be more intricate and more beautiful to the viewers, in 3D.

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.

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

There's always been a shortage of roles for three-dimensional women, no matter what age. If you look at the statistics on women in film, be they behind the camera or in front of the camera, and it's pretty nauseous-making. It always has been.

I think about it all the time. I love filmmaking. Whether I'd be in front of the camera or behind the camera, I just love that world.

The contemporary artist...is not bound to a fully conceived, previsioned end. His mind is kept alert to in-process discovery and a working rapport is established between the artist and his creation. While it may be true, as Nathan Lyons stated, 'The eye and the camera see more than the mind knows,' is it not also conceivable that the mind knows more than the eye and the camera can see?

When I put the camera back to my eye, I noticed a particular guardsman pointing at me. I said, "I'll get a picture of this," and his rifle went off. And almost simultaneously, as his rifle went off, a halo of dust came off a sculpture next to me, and the bullet lodged in a tree. I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition. I don't know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity... but I never took cover.

When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.

On practical level I can't pick up the camera until I think I know what I want. I don't wander around. It's almost impossible for me to pick up a camera... it's really hard.

For example, in my dorm, at the University of Kentucky, I had the only camera. I don't think anyone came to college with a camera, other than me.

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.

It's like being called up in the draft. The peculiar joy of hemorrhaging without bleeding starts when the evil little red light glows on the monstrous camera.

The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.

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

I'm sure favorite moments in movies are things that just happen accidentally when the camera is there. You have to do all the homework to get yourself into the period, the costumes, the style, the voice, the hairdo or whatever it is, but once you've done all that work, you have to kind of let it go and just be there. If you're always thinking about it, it just looks a bit over-thought.

I operate the camera, I always do it when I'm the director, and I like to approach it as a documentary, finding the images based on what happens, as it happens.

The camera can move, you can make the shots, blah blah blah, but as long as the actors are good, you have something.

I'm not used to being in front of a camera as myself. I'm not used to watching myself as myself.

Off-camera, I sound like Perry Como.

You have to understand where the camera needs to me. There were times where you were suddenly aware where the cameras were, then you were in a different place and it didn't feel like the same movie.

I really did feel like I was surrounded by family members. I didn't have a dad, and I remember there were all these guys - in the old days, there were no women, except a makeup artist or, occasionally, a script supervisor. So there were just guys who taught me how to, you know, whittle wood, or how to pull focus, and what the camera was doing. And if I was being bratty, they'd sit me down and tell me. There were lots of rules about not being late and making sure that you didn't spill anything. So it felt a little bit like I was in a family.

I don't trust any camera you can't make out of wood.

As Mike Bickle said to me, there is a spiritual battle going on in the world, and he believes that in America marriage between a man and a woman will become illegal. He believes there will be a war. He believes it'll begin in schools and the Christian kids will rise up and slay the non-Christian kids. This was an on-camera interview!

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

Actors make bad lovers. Their most important kiss is for the camera. Not in a superficial way, in a really deep way. They can only give everything if they know someone is going to shout cut!

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.

I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.