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You become technically proficient whether you want to or not, the more you take pictures.

William Eggleston

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William Eggleston
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: July 27
Artist
Photographer
Memphis
Tennessee
Bill Eggleston
Become
Take
Proficient
Technically
Pictures
Photographer
Whether

More quotes by William Eggleston

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It quickly came to be that I grew interested in photographing whatever was there wherever I happened to be. For any reason.
William Eggleston
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Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me.
William Eggleston
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There's plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film - I don't think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that's going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I'm color-blind.
William Eggleston
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I am at war with the obvious.
William Eggleston
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There is no particular reason to search for meaning.
William Eggleston
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I've also never had favorite pictures. Or subjects. I have this discipline of treating everything equally-I used to say democratically.
William Eggleston
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I only ever take one picture of one thing. Literally. Never two. So then that picture is taken and then the next one is waiting somewhere else.
William Eggleston
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Whether a photo or music, or a drawing or anything else I might do—it’s ultimately all an abstraction of my peculiar experience.
William Eggleston
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Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it's just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with each other.
William Eggleston
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I’ve always assumed that the abstract qualities of [my] photographs are obvious. For instance, I can turn them upside down and they’re still interesting to me as pictures. If you turn a picture that’s not well organized upside down, it won’t work.
William Eggleston
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You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too.
William Eggleston
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I don't look at other photographs much at all. I don't know why. I study my own a lot.
William Eggleston
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The immediate reviews were very hostile, but they didn't bother me-I had the attitude that I was right. The poor guys who were critics just didn't understand the works at all. I was sorry about that, but it didn't weigh on my mind a bit.
William Eggleston
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Unfortunately they're practically all dead. And many were my closest associates: friends, co-directors, whatever you want to say - my partners in crime.
William Eggleston
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And what we called photojournalism, the photos seen in places like Life magazine, didn't interest me either. They were just not good-there was no art there. The first person who I respected immensely was Henri Cartier-Bresson. I still do.
William Eggleston
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I don't have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It's not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn't do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough.
William Eggleston
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I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography, not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it. That's what I still do today.
William Eggleston
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I would play music every day from the time I was about 4 or 5 years old. Every time I would go from one end of the house to the other, I would pass the piano and play a few notes.
William Eggleston
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I quite frequently don't look through the camera, which is very close to being blind.
William Eggleston
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I knew it was happening, but I never paid much attention to it . . . just to the passage of time. Something new always slowly changes right in front of your eyes - it just happens.
William Eggleston