Tripods Quotes

I once recommended [in a San Francisco Chronicle column] that a third arm - a plastic arm - be sewn at the base of the spine so that people could have a tripod to sit on while waiting in line, and it was taken seriously. ~ Alan Abel

It would have been possible to structure my photographs in such a way that no indicators of the present were discernible. However, I wanted to incorporate into the project as a whole the jostling of time-frames I would feel as I set up my tripod on various rocky promontories. ~ John Pfahl

We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No one sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.

We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collect ~ Don DeLillo

collect As many tripods as you think you'll need, Together with the other kinds of vessels That the rites of sacrifice require: cauldrons, Shallow basins, bowls; pour tall jugs full 8860 Of purest water from the sacred spring; Have ready wood that's dry and quick to catch; And finally, be sure a sharp knife's there. All else I leave to you." Those ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

When I got the camera on the shoulder, they give me a nickname. They call me 'the tripod' because I'm kind of short and kind of strong. So if I take the camera and I lock myself, you think that you're on a crane. ~ Luc Besson

Some cameras are heavier and need to be on tripods. Others are small enough to hide in your pocket. There are places where you don't want to feel like you are disturbing anything, so I may use a camera like that. ~ Jonas Mekas

If you're setting up lights and tripods, and you've got three assistants running around, people will want to get you out as fast as they can. But if you go the opposite way, if you make the camera the least important thing in the room, then it's different. ~ D. A. Pennebaker

A model shoot was going on at half-court. Lots of those umbrella lights and tall, bony women-cum-children and tripods and people huffing and fluffing about. Myron waited for someone to mistake him for a model. And waited. ~ Harlan Coben

I'm too impatient to use a tripod. ~ Ralph Gibson

She climbed down the cliffs after tying her sweater loosely around her waist. Down below she could see nothing but jagged rocks and waves. She was creful, but I watched her feet more than the view she saw- I worried about her slipping.
My mother's desire to reach those waves, touch her feet to another ocean on the other side of the country, was all she was thinking of- the pure baptismal goal of it. Whoosh and you can start over again. Or was life more like the horrible game in gym that has you running from one side of an enclosed space to another, picking up and setting down wooden blocks without end? She was thinking reach the waves, the waves, the waves, and I was watching her navigate the rocks, and when we heard her we did so together- looking up in shock.
It was a baby on the beach.
In among the rocks was a sandy cove, my mother now saw, and crawling across the sand on a blanket was a baby in knitted pink cap and singlet and boots. She was alone on the blanket with a stuffed white toy- my mother thought a lamb.
With their backs to my mother as she descended were a group of adults-very official and frantic-looking- wearing black and navy with cool slants to their hats and boots. Then my wildlife photographer's eye saw the tripods and silver circles rimmed by wire, which, when a young man moved them left or right, bounced light off or on the baby on her blanket.
My mother started laughing, but only one assistant turned to notice her up among t ~ Alice Sebold

We used hand-held cameras 50 years ago. It wasn't something new. Sometimes we used a tripod, or we'd have a tracking shot, and sometimes - like when a character was being chased - we used a hand-held camera because it was right for the scene. In those cases, it helped the mood; it created immediacy and a feeling for the viewer that they were in the scene and in the moment. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves. ~ Aristotle.

My preference is that, that day when someone sticks a tripod in front of you with a camera on the top, it is not day one. ~ Daniel Day-Lewis

The walls were draped with banners covered with cabalistic signs, an abundance of owls of all kinds, scarabs and ibises, and Oriental divinities of uncertain origin. Near the rear wall was a dais, a proscenium of burning torches held up by rough logs, and in the background an altar with a triangular altarpiece and statuettes of Isis and Osiris. The room was ringed by an amphitheater of figures of Anubis, and there was a portrait of Cagliostro (it could hardly have been of anyone else, could it?), a gilded mummy in Cheops format, two five-armed candelabra, a gong suspended from two rampant snakes, on a podium a lectern covered by calico printed with hieroglyphics, and two crowns, two tripods, a little portable sarcophagus, a throne, a fake seventeenth-century fauteuil, four unmatched chairs suitable for a banquet with the sheriff of Nottingham, and candles, tapers, votive lights, all flickering very spiritually. ~ Umberto Eco

I think the equipment you use has a real, visible influence on the character of your photography. You're going to work differently, and make different kinds of pictures, if you have to set up a view camera on a tripod than if you're Lee Friedlander with handheld 35 mm rangefinder. But fundamentally, vision is not about which camera or how many megapixels you have, it's about what you find important. It's all about ideas. ~ Keith Carter