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22 Great Quotes By Duane Michals

 
Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Duane Michals.
“Trust that little voice in your head that says ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if…’; And then do it.” – Duane Michals
“Don’t try to be an artist. Find the thing within you that needs to be expressed. You might find it is art.” – Duane Michals
“I am an expressionist and by that I mean that I’m not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.” – Duane Michals
“People believe in the reality of photographs, but not in the reality of paintings. That gives photographers an enormous advantage. Unfortunately, photographers also believe in the reality of photographs.” – Duane Michals
“Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.” – Duane Michals
“I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I’m not interested in what things look like.” – Duane Michals
“You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he’s in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin?” – Duane Michals
“Because of my involvement with my photographs, it is difficult for me really to see them objectively. Talking about them is like talking about myself. The only real idea that I have about them is that they are essentially snapshots. For snapshots, I feel, often have an inherent simplicity and directness that I find beautiful. The roots of my photographs are in this tradition.” – Duane Michals
“However, I think that the photographer must completely control his picture and bring to it all his personality, and in this area most photographs never transcend being just snapshots. When a great photographer does infuse the snapshot with his personality and vision, it can be transformed into something truly moving and beautiful.” – Duane Michals
“The best part of us is not what we see, it’s what we feel. We are what we feel. We are not what we look at . . .. We’re not our eyeballs, we’re our mind. People believe their eyeballs and they’re totally wrong . . .. That’s why I consider most photographs extremely boring–just like Muzak, inoffensive, charming, another waterfall, another sunset. This time, colors have been added to protect the innocent. It’s just boring. But that whole arena of one’s experience–grief, loneliness–how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see. It’s all sitting up here. I could do all my work sitting in my room. I don’t have to go anywhere.” – Duane Michals
“I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn’t tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.” – Duane Michals
“Photography does deal with ‘truth’ or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality – it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?” – Duane Michals
“I believe in the invisible. I do not believe in the definitive reality of things around us. For me, reality is the intuition and the imagination and the quiet voice inside my head that says: isn’t that extraordinary? The things in our lives are the shadows of reality, just as we ourselves are shadows.” – Duane Michals
“Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we’re going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?” – Duane Michals
“I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” – Duane Michals
“Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.” – Duane Michals
“I use photography to help me explain my experiences to myself.” – Duane Michals
“I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody’s face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.” – Duane Michals
Duane Michals
“I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.” – Duane Michals
“All good work has magic in it, and addresses the mind in a subtle way.” – Duane Michals
“Art is really whispering, not shouting.” – Duane Michals
“My gift to you is that I am different.” – Duane Michals
View 12 Great Photographs By Duane Michals.
Watch Duane Michals talk about his art.

22 Quotes On Flow

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Enjoy this collection of quotes on the state of flow.
“Let’s make things exist and then judge later. Don’t cancel the process of creativity too early: Let it flow.” – Ross Lovegrove
“One of my teachers once said that the way you know you’re on the right path is that it works. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t run into blocks and brick walls, but it does mean that you can find a way around them or find a way to change yourself or your project in order to find the flow again and have it work.” – James Redfield
“I live my life on self-believe and I live it partly on going with the flow.” – Melanie Brown
“Life is so much easier when I allow myself to be myself and go with the flow. Whatever that looks like on a given day. If I can get quiet enough to truly check in with myself, I usually end up on the right track.” – Taylor Schilling
“The most important part of life is work, it’s the flow, it’s getting stuff done, feeling like you’re doing something.” – Penn Jillette
“My hand does the work and I don’t have to think. In fact, were I to think, it would stop the flow. It’s like a dam in the brain that bursts.” – Edna O’Brien
“Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow.” – Paracelsus
“The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well.” – Jack Welch
“The self expands through acts of self-forgetfulness.” – Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Read More

5 Ways To Use Abstraction

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1 – Simplify

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2 – Clarify A Structure

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3 – Show A Process

 
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4  – Visualize A Concept

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5 – Create A Pattern

To one degree or another, every photograph is abstract. At a minimum, photographs are flat rather than three-dimensional. Some photographs are more graphic than others, and the origins of a few photographs are virtually unrecognizable. Determining to what degree a photograph is abstract, how it is abstract, and why it’s abstract will help you understand more about it and its creator’s intentions; this might be you.
Abstraction can serve many functions: it can direct, structure, inform, and express.
Whether you use it a little or a lot, abstraction is a vehicle that can help you strengthen your stories and clarify your point of view. As every image is abstract to one degree or another, ultimately, the question is not whether you will use abstraction but how you will use abstraction in your images. Exploring abstraction is time will spent.
Read the full article on Craft & Vision.
Learn more in my creativity and digital photography workshops.
 
 

Photographers Celebrate The Power Of The Print


“The industry’s most respected photographers, brought together for the new Print Your Legacy campaign from Epson, talk about what drew them to photography, the inspiration that drives their work and the stories behind their most famous images.”
Hear these photographers celebrate the power of the print.
John Paul Caponigro
Jeremy Cowart
Gregory Crewdson
Steve McCurry
Mark Seliger
Tim Tadder
Amy Toensing
Stephen Wilkes
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
Read more with my online Printing Resources.
View more with my Printing DVD.

New Epson Legacy Papers

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“Legacy Papers marry the artistry of revered European paper making with the latest advancements in inkjet coating technology.
Working with the finest paper mills in Germany and France we first specify the type of base required for each of the Legacy papers. Once the base is produced, advanced microporus coatings are applied using modern techniques for the highest quality and consistency.
Only after meeting hundreds of design specifications, while ensuring for a high rate of production consistency for the richest blacks, outstanding color fidelity and smooth tonal transitions, will a paper carry the Epson Legacy name.”
The First Four Epson Legacy Papers

  • Legacy Platine: 100 percent cotton fibre paper with a bright OBA-free, smooth satin finish. With a unique feel of an artistic paper of centuries past, along with an outstanding color gamut, this paper is exceptional for both color and black and white printmaking.
  • Legacy Fibre: 100 percent cotton fibre paper with an exceptionally bright OBA-free, smooth matte finish. With an outstanding black density, this paper is ideal for all types of high-end printmaking.
  • Legacy Baryta: A baryta paper with a white, smooth satin finish, utilizing two barium sulfate coatings. Inspired by the F64 group, this paper takes the best of revered silver halide technology to new levels of quality.
  • Legacy Etching: 100 percent cotton fibre paper with a bright OBA-free, uniquely textured matte finish beloved by artists for centuries. This paper has the feel of traditional etching papers.

Find out more here.

“The combination of Epson Legacy Paper and Epson UltraChrome® HD and HDX pigment ink technology can provide up to twice the Display Permanence Ratings of previous generation inks, according to tests conducted by the Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc.”

Find out more here.

2 Books That Influenced My Thinking About The Relationship Between Man & Nature

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Two books have profoundly influenced my thinking about man’s relationships with nature.

Jamake Highwater’s The Primal Mind is the best explanation of Native American viewpoints on the deep interconnectivity between humans and land, as well as art, that I’ve ever read.

Here’s an excerpt …

“Art is a way of seeing, and what we see in art helps to define what we understand by the word “reality.” We do not all see the same things. Though the dominant societies usually presume that their vision represents the sole truth about the world, each society (and often individuals with the same society) sees reality uniquely. The complex process by which the arts transforms the act of seeing into a vision of the world is one of the the consummate mysteries of the arts – one of the reasons that art is inseparable from religion and philosophy for most tribal peoples.”

Find The Primal Mind here.

David Abrams The Spell Of The Sensuous is a poetic rumination on the important role language plays in forming identity and relationships – and he suggests the English language lacks key concepts.

Here’s an excerpt …

“Ecologically considered, it is not primarily our verbal statements that are “true” or “false,” but rather the kind of relationsh that we sustain with the rest of nature. A human community that lives in a mutually beneficial relation with the surrounding earth is a community, we might say, that lives in truth.”

Find The Spell Of The Sensuous here.

Listen to me read two of my favorite passages from these books here.

Find more Recommended Reading here.

(For more reading in this vein click on Important Thoughts.)