Quotes by Annie Leibovitz

• Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.
• I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.
• My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.
• 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.
• It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.
• It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.
• 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.
• If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.
• 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'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.
• My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.
• I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.
• 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 shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.
• 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.
• I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.
• I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.
• 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 don't think there is anything wrong with white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.
• Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.
• You don't have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.
• When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.
• 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.
• When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person's time, turns out to be the most valuable thing.
• When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.
• The pictures of my family were designed to be on a family wall, they were supposed to be together. It was supposed to copy my mother's wall in her house.
• 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.
• 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.
• What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.
• 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.
• The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!
• The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.
• Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter.
• No one ever thought Clint Eastwood was funny, but he was.
• When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.
• Coming tight was boring to me, just the face... it didn't have enough information.
• At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.
• A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.
• I feel very proud of the work from the '80s because it is very bright and colorful.
• Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.
• A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.
• Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important, capture the good times, develop from the negative, and if things don’t work out, take another shot!
• Life is like a camera: you focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't work out, take another shot!
• Life is like a camera, focus on what’s important, capture the good times, develop from the negative, and if things don’t work out, take another shot!
• Life is like a camera: focus on what's important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don't turn out, take another shot.
• Life is like a camera. Focus on what's important, capture the good times, and if it doesn't work out, take another shot!
• Life is like a camera: focus on what’s important, capture the good times, and if things don’t work out—take another shot!
• Life is like photography; you need the dark to focus on the bright.