Annie Leibovitz

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.

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

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 went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.

I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.

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.

Those who want to be serious photographers, you're really going to have to edit your work. You're going to have to understand what you're doing. You're going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do.

I don't think there is anything wrong with white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.

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

I'm more interested in being good than being famous.

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

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

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

Photography is not something you retire from.

As a young person, and I know it__ hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn__ do normally if I was just by myself.