Arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, — finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. I say that chance enters into all branches of art.

Edward Weston

Categorized in : Art Opportunity Photography

Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.

Edward Weston

yards car photography

If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

Edward Weston

cutting photography giving

The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

Edward Weston

squirrels photography long

Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.

Edward Weston

photography law littles

I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty. Here was every sensuous curve of the human figure divine but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.

Edward Weston

extraordinary-beauty curves home

Dare to be irrational! - keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.

Edward Weston

dare fluid courage

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

Edward Weston

photography photographer matter

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

Edward Weston

rocks photography looks

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

Edward Weston

program photography photographer

The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.

Edward Weston

creativity photography art

For photography is a way to capture the moment - not just any moment, but the important one, this one moment out of all time when your subject is revealed to the fullest - that moment of perfection which comes once and is not repeated.

Edward Weston

important photography perfection

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 photography matter

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

Edward Weston

cameras eye photography

I would say to any artist: Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.

Edward Weston

dare photographer artist

Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.

Edward Weston

photography knowing moving

Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?

Edward Weston

vision eye opportunity

Art is based on order. The world is full of 'sloppy Bohemians' and their work betrays them.

Edward Weston

order world art

I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.

Edward Weston

lenses photography want

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

Edward Weston

photography photographer reason

A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one's own faults without bothering about others.

Edward Weston

faults lifetime bother