Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.
Annie Leibovitz
A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.
In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
I'm more interested in being good than being famous.
When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.
You don't have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.
In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.
I fell in love with the darkroom, and that was part of being a photographer at the time. The darkroom was unbelievably sexy. I would spend all night in the darkroom.
My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.
As much as I'm not a journalist, I use journalism. And when you photograph a relationship, it's quite wonderful to let something unfold in front of you.
I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.
I didn't want to let women down. One of the stereotypes I see breaking is the idea of aging and older women not being beautiful.
A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.
I'd like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.
The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.
Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.
I don't think there is anything wrong with white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.
When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.
I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.
As soon as you put something to bed like the 'Women' book, you're never finished. There were portraits of people that I wanted to photograph - it's an endless subject.
My father was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, which had a hospital where they brought casualties straight from the battlefield. My mother was kind of a sophisticated bohemian, and my father was in the military to make a living.
I don't think I could give advice to my younger self because she probably wouldn't listen.
It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.
There are still so many places on our planet that remain unexplored. I'd love to one day peel back the mystery and understand them.
I went on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1972 for two or three cities. And in 1975, I was the tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. I hung onto my camera for dear life. Because it scared the hell out of me.
As I get older, the book projects are - liberating is one word, but they really are me.
If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.
What has stayed true all the way through my work is my composition, I hope, and my sense of color.
When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion.
I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'
I've never liked the word 'celebrity.' I like to photograph people who are good at what they do.
I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.
My body was so instrumental to how I took pictures: it was practically a dance. I used to use my legs a lot; now I'm a little more sedentary.
Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter.
My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.
Those who want to be serious photographers, you're really going to have to edit your work. You're going to have to understand what you're doing. You're going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do.
When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.
I went to Yosemite as an homage to Ansel Adams. I could never be Ansel Adams, but to know that's there for us - there's so much for us in this country.
What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.
There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.
I've learned to create a palette, a vocabulary of ways to take pictures.
There were some advantages to being a woman photographer. I think women have more empathy with the subject.
I'm a huge, huge fan of photography. I have a small photography collection. As soon as I started to make some money, I bought my very first photograph: an Henri Cartier-Bresson. Then I bought a Robert Frank.
If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.
What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.
I love photography. And I just eat it up. I feel like I'm an encyclopedia, you know, inside.
I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.
I've created a vocabulary of different styles. I draw from many different ways to take a picture. Sometimes I go back to reportage, to journalism.
I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.
