Top 590 Camera Quotes

The reality of nostalgia is nowhere better invoked than at the end of Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris.’ When the camera pans away from Kelvin embracing his father on the rain-soaked steps of his dacha, we realise that the scene is yet another of the simulations produced by the inscrutable planet.

People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.

As a little girl, I was always shy, but in front of the camera I wasn’t.

A visual understanding of great composition and how to use a camera and expensive lenses can be learned, but drive and a real hunger for making photos and telling stories… I don’t think that part can be learned. You either have that inside, or you don’t.

I carry a disposable camera. It takes me back to my childhood, when you had to develop your film and wait to see what pictures you got.

A good browser, apps, good camera, and fast networking in your smartphone is just expected today.

Now when I see something beautiful or funny or sweet, sometimes I reach for my camera, but other times I think, ‘I need to let this moment exist. I don’t have to capture everything. I just want to experience it.’

I’ve never liked the moment of seeing something beautiful – a sunset, a moose, an elephant – and then raising a camera and trying to capture it for some future moment. That’s always struck me as strange.

Everything about filmmaking is incredibly weird, and there’s nothing natural about watching yourself on the big screen or hearing your voice. It’s that same thing that you feel when you watch yourself on a video camera and you hate the sound of your voice – it’s that times 800.

Whenever I see a mirror, I just look at myself, or when I see my own reflection, I quickly take a look; I won’t lie about that. But when I am in front of the camera, it’s just the character, not me.

Of the thousands of people, celebrated and unknown, who have sat before my camera, I am often asked who was the most difficult subject, or the easiest, or which picture is my favorite. This last question is like asking a mother which child she likes the most.

The audience is the camera. I don’t want the audience to sit and watch, I want it to move.

I remember, as a kid, nothing struck me funnier than seeing Richard Nixon look into the camera and sincerely tell everyone he didn’t know where the 18 minutes had gone from his tapes. But there was all this sweat on his upper lip. We knew he was lying. He knew we knew he was lying. But he was determined to tell the lie.

I’m funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while.

The dynamic range of the digital camera is pretty crappy compared to film, but now film is not great because the labs have closed. It’s going to hurt a lot of the movies that we did in this gap because I think they are going to look very old very soon.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea.

In Goodfellas they have this one scene where the camera goes down some steps and walks through a kitchen into a restaurant and the critics were all over this as evidence of the genius of Scorsese and Scorsese is a genius.

When I was little, I didn’t know you got paid for acting. My parents put the money in the bank for me, but I just thought it was this fun thing that I was so excited to do. You got to be on the set and get a little bit of makeup and be on camera.

When I was young, for some reason, I thought a postman’s job was quite cool, and once, I even contemplated becoming a lawyer. Finally, I decided to dabble in something creative like fashion designing or photography. Till I joined college, I had no clue that one day, I will face the camera.

I thought that it would be easier to learn that if I worked in motion pictures. So I went to work with one motion picture producer who was developing a color system. This didn’t do to me much good. All I did was pick filters for the camera.

Working in front of the camera keeps me alive.

When I was a kid, my mother used to film all of our holidays and all of the good times, and I kind of associated the camera with everything being okay and everything being happy.

The reward is that you can actually create a world separate from reality with a story, actors, music, and camera design. When it works it can entertain, move people and teach us all.

Unlike others who have been caught swearing on camera, I apologised immediately. And yet I am the only person banned for swearing. That doesn’t seem right.

If you ask me, we actors have this amazing ability to detach ourselves from an emotion and just do it for the camera.

I like figuring out where I need to be mentally so that I’m not thinking about the camera and that it’s second nature. I want to get to a place where I can exist within the confines of what you can do with filmmaking and not have to think about it.

Nothing could be recorded in those days except by aiming a movie camera at the television screen. It was at least another 10 years before they had any kind of recording medium.

I was molded, spent my time underneath a lot of goo. And then the bits and pieces were sculpted. It took probably 10 days to create each character after all those camera tests.

I’m involved in music and fashion a lot more than I used to be, so my style has definitely changed – for the better, of course. It’s given me greater insight into what colours work, what looks good on camera, and what I feel comfortable in.

My house is full of antics, mayhem, foolishness, carrying on, cutting up, shucking and jiving, and I have that whether cameras are there or not. Our youngest just had us up with her shenanigans and hijinks all night. So, it’s all the time, even off camera.

The thrill of being in front of a camera remains exactly the same.

As an actor, the first thing you’re taught is, ‘Don’t look into the camera; ignore it.’

I would love to work with Adam Sandler. Because then all I’d have to do is just turn the camera on and off.

‘House of Style’ changed my life. I literally had no experience in front of a TV camera before, and there I was taking over for Rebecca Romijn. My exposure heightened instantly.

I suffer from a more complex, persistent fear. It manifests itself in nerves, and on film the camera sees even the tiniest evidence of this. So you have to learn that when the director calls ‘Action,’ you don’t go to this place of tension, but somehow you become free.

Being an anchor is not just a matter of sitting in front of a camera and looking pretty.

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.

I grew up loving films and making stupid movies with a good friend of mine, who now actually has a career in a really prominent special effects house, so he’s still doing it. We just started messing around with a camera.

I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn’t. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it’s about you and what you want to be. You’re not being treated like a clothes hanger.

When I was little, I would always try and look into the television screen along the sides. I kept thinking if you looked in there, you could see what was happening off camera.

When I walked in to read with Edie Falco, it was nice, because I auditioned in New York, and it was very quick. You walk in, there’s Edie, the producers, the director, and a camera. I read three scenes, and it was done.

Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing.

Among other things, I use a Samsung mobile phone, a very bad quality video camera, and an old Olympus with extremely bad Sigma lenses.

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

I couldn’t be ‘Johnny’ in front of a camera in acting jobs and behind the camera I like to be ‘Michael.’ With directing, you can’t do it by halves. There’s a lot of reflection, and I have found that I, as ‘Michael,’ thrive on it. It’s lovely coming home and feeling that stuff from a day’s work as myself.

I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole ‘enigmatic artist’ thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.

So about twenty years ago I gave up on painting – and got into terrible debt after buying a load of camera gear!

I suffer from stage fright, so I blabber on stage and stop midway through my performances. I cannot even write a cheque, as it makes me nervous. Being around people makes me nervous. But I’m very comfortable in front of the camera, and this I realised many films later.

I tried to keep both arts alive, but the camera won. I found that while the camera does not express the soul, perhaps a photograph can!

I always say that I’ve been in a bad mood for maybe 35 years now. I try to lighten it up, but that’s what comes out when you get me on camera.

The reason bin Laden staggered the planes going into the towers was so every camera would be focused on the second tower when the plane hit. It was not only the murder, but the perpetual image of the horror that permeated into people’s consciousness.