Peter Menzel Quotes

Think about the photo you want to make beforehand. Then do it, but also don't be blind to better options that present themselves at the location. Be flexible, and be patient. Leave ego at home. Get the photo before you yell at the asshole, not after.

After I discovered my degree in photojournalism would only get me a job in a camera store, I taught myself lighting. I read tons of magazines and books and studied the photos trying to figure out how they were done. I bought some flash equipment and played around until I figured out how to make a subject look as I envisioned it should look.

Getting up way in advance of dawn is always a good idea. Nearly ninety-nine percent of the time when I have gotten up in the middle of the night for a shoot, something good always presents itself to offset the nagging tiredness and discomfort of losing sleep.

Having a partner who is your wife traveling with you can be great. We each have our roles in the work and then can help each other out on the emotional front when things get stressful, which they are.

I've heard Braggadocio about excess baggage charges, multiple unused hotel rooms, and rental cars held unused for long periods of time, which makes me lose respect for certain photographers. Sometimes it's worth it to spend money on a good idea, but wasting money makes me ill.

RAW is very forgiving. I was photographing a farm woman in Ecuador cooking over a small fire and my fill flash didn't go off a few times. I was about to delete the RAW files but decided to play with the curves first because I like the composition. It turned out that the image, although underexposed by two stops, was better than the fill-flashed images because the fire was the only source of illumination and it looked more real.

Freelancing in Somalia during their civil war and in Kuwait right after the first Bush War, I had some rather intense experiences that made life in the U.S. seem rather shallow and superfluous.

Scientists are usually nice, organized, logical people who are very cooperative. I always learn a lot of science while shooting science stories and it helps to be able to speak intelligently to a subject about his or her field of work, i.e., do your homework before the photography.

I sold all my medium format equipment in 2005 after Canon came out with the 12 megapixel EOS 1Ds.

I don't shoot many corporate or commercial jobs, but when you do, you had better have someone helping who has done it before.

Do something you like that you feel is important. Don't worry about making money at it right away. If you try hard and long enough you will figure out a way to do it. Better to die happy than die rich.

It is tough being patient when you are more than a half million dollars in debt.

I like to move as much as possible and look at reflections, weird angles, subjects from airplanes and cranes. I feel sorry for the Jabba the Hut types who can't do this. Once an obese student told me that he wanted to be a war photographer. I said, "Really?" and then I shot him.

To me a translator is very, very important. If the fixer is also the translator, so much the better. I have known photographers who didn't speak the language and would work in a place for weeks without one, getting by on common sense and smiles. But how many situations did they miss because they couldn't talk to someone and get the back story on details, small daily life things, etc.

The summer of 1966, I hitch-hiked alone for two months all over Europe instead of working on a farm in Spain. It was a big game to see how much I could see on $400. This got me hooked on traveling.

Before digital, I spent thirty years shooting color transparencies, which are very unforgiving of exposure. A half stop can make or break a good photo on slide film.

Everyone thinks it would be great to work for National Geographic. So did I.

I fell in love with traveling and thought being a photographer would be an interesting way to travel and make a living.

It is so much better to get the right exposure than to have to mess around later with Photoshop.

The fact that a thirteen-year-old project still resonates and can still have a large exhibit with lots of newspaper, magazine and TV press shows the timelessness of the project.

My modus operandi after working for a decade as a self-funding freelancer, was to spend as little money as possible to get the job done, even if it was on someone else's nickel.