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To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

Edward Weston

Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.
EDWARD WESTON

Clouds Interdepend Rocks Tree
To see the Thing itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism… This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant presentation – not interpretation.
EDWARD WESTON

Essential Fog Rocks
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
EDWARD WESTON

Hard Work Matter Photography
I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.
EDWARD WESTON

Approach Theory
If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.
EDWARD WESTON

Cutting Giving Photography
A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one’s own faults without bothering about others.
EDWARD WESTON

Bother Faults Lifetime
Dare to be irrational! – keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.
EDWARD WESTON

Courage Dare Fluid
Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?
EDWARD WESTON

Eye Opportunity Vision
It’s hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Cameras Telling Truth
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea, even switch me to different subject matter. So I start out with my mind as free from image as the silver film on which I am to record, and I hope as sensitive.
EDWARD WESTON

Eye Ideas Matter Mind Switch
Art is based on order. The world is full of ‘sloppy Bohemians’ and their work betrays them.
EDWARD WESTON

Art Order World
I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.
EDWARD WESTON

Lenses Photography Want
“Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed “artists”.”
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Lying Photography
This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.
EDWARD WESTON

Looks Photography Rocks
…through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.
EDWARD WESTON

Eye Light Lying
Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.
EDWARD WESTON

Makers Results Way
I always work better when I do not reason, when no question of right or wrong enter in,-when my pulse quickens to the form before me without hesitation nor calculation.
EDWARD WESTON

Form Pulse Reason
If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!
EDWARD WESTON

Amazed Interest Reason
When money enters in – then, for a price, I become a liar – and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.
EDWARD WESTON

Hate Liars Support
I was extravagant in the matter of cameras – anything photographic – I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest – or without.
EDWARD WESTON

Cameras Matter Photography
The great scientist dares to differ from accepted ‘facts’ – think irrationally – let the artist do likewise.
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Facts Thinking
No photographer is better than the simplest of cameras
EDWARD WESTON

Cameras Photographer Simplest
Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.
EDWARD WESTON

Car Photography Yards
……so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.
EDWARD WESTON

Composition Technique Way
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer’s understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.
EDWARD WESTON

Important Photography Understanding
For the obvious reason that nature – unadulterated and unimproved by man – is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement.
EDWARD WESTON

Arrangement Cameras Facts Lack Men
Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.
EDWARD WESTON

Composition Strongest Way

To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

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To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

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