Elliott Erwitt

The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.

I'm an amateur photographer, apart from being a professional one, and I think maybe my amateur pictures are the better ones.

I enjoy nothing more than spending time with my loved ones, young and old, and at least once a year we get together for a formal family photograph.

I'll always be an amateur photographer.

Everybody's got to do something... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors' children and so on.

The advantage of taking pictures of the famous is that they get published.

It's almost embarrassing, but I do have one trick for taking portraits on commission. I carry one of these little bicycle horns in my pocket, and once in a while, when someone is sour-faced or stiff, I blow my horn. It sort of shatters the barriers. It's silly, but it works.

When I get up in the morning I brush my teeth and go about my business, and if I am going anywhere interesting I take my camera along.

Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.

Most photographers work best alone, myself included.

You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.

Somehow Photoshop and the ease with which one can produce an image has degraded the quality of photography in general.

I've been around so long, most editors think I'm dead.

A visual sense is something you either have or you don't.

I don't really have a favorite camera. I use a Leica and Canon a lot. It depends, especially professionally, on the requirements. But my carry-around camera is a Leica.

Now very often events are set up for photographers... The weddings are orchestrated about the photographers taking the picture, because if it hasn't been photographed it doesn't really exist.

I appreciate simplicity, true beauty that lasts over time, and a little wit and eclecticism that make life more fun.

Be sure to take the lens cap off before photographing.

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words.

If your subjects are eternal... they'll survive.

In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, as normal human beings. And if I felt part of any movement at the time, it was just to do that - to be journalistic and photograph what is, rather than what is made up.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

I'm not a serious photographer like many of my contemporaries. That is to say, I am serious about not being serious.

Professionally I've evolved with what's required, but the pictures I do for pleasure haven't changed, except for the cars in the background, the clothing. I haven't changed at all.

Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Making books is a very specific kind of activity. It's not really a collection of your best pictures - although it is - but it's also a way of presenting your work so that it's not repetitive, so that it flows, and so that it makes sense in a book.

My 'work' is about seeing not about ideas.

The ratio of successful shots is one in God-knows-how-many. Sometimes you'll get several in one contact sheet, and sometimes it's none for days. But as long as you go on taking pictures, you're likely to get a good one at some point.