A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned.
BILL BRANDTIt is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.
More Bill Brandt Quotes
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By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule.
BILL BRANDT -
It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.
BILL BRANDT -
I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.
BILL BRANDT -
Very rarely are we able to free our minds of thoughts and emotions and just see for the simple pleasure of seeing. And so long as we fail to do this, so long will the essence of things be hidden from us.
BILL BRANDT -
It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of a child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country
BILL BRANDT -
I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.
BILL BRANDT -
By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all.
BILL BRANDT -
We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare
BILL BRANDT -
If there is any method in the way I take pictures, I believe it lies in this: See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. The subject will reveal itself.
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And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.
BILL BRANDT -
No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.
BILL BRANDT -
I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work.
BILL BRANDT -
Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.
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Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.
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Andre Breton once said that a portrait should not only be an image but an oracle one questions, and that the photographer’s aim should be a profound likeness, which physically and morally predicts the subject’s entire future.
BILL BRANDT