Quotes By Annie Leibovitz

The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.

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.

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.

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.

A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.

What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.

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.

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.

You don't have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.

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.

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 started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.

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 I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.

It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.

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.

Coming tight was boring to me, just the face... it didn't have enough information.

A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.

At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.

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 feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.

No one ever thought Clint Eastwood was funny, but he was.

My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.

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 feel very proud of the work from the '80s because it is very bright and colorful.

I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul - I don't think this is possible all of the time.

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 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.