Steve Coleman

Here’s a few of my quirky, sometimes insightful, occasionally inspirational, but never to be taken too seriously, thoughts on Life, Art and Photography.

• ArT is a Verb…

• Focus a few inches back from your camera.

• Art ~ it’s often a small voice, in a big world, trying to make some sense of it all.

• A camera has no heart or soul. That alone is mine to toll. A mirror to its holders soul.
  

• I stand watching. Waiting. I am alone, but I am not lonely. Shifting light, textures, shades; these are my companions.

• Some days I struggle to see.

• If you don’t like what you see, then you need to see differently.

• Live, Love, Laugh… and carry a camera.

• When you pick-up your camera you potentially take 7 billion people with you.

• Film has its own story to tell.

• A still picture can make people stop ~ stop & look, stop & read, stop & think, stop & dream, stop & hope, stop & shop, stop & change, stop turning the page. A still picture is not a space filler, it can be a powerful and concentrated moment for thought and reflection.

• ‎~ ~ slow ~ ~ I love slow; gives me time to think and ponder. Slow is relaxing, a nice balance to our fast world. Slow is one reason I went back to film.

• Morning light, Soft light, It’s colored light, But isn’t bright. I wait and watch… The water rolls, the clouds move and light reflects off all it touches. My camera stays open, recording in one image, all this movement and light. How wonderful this world is.

• The first recorded war was 2700BC. We humans have been fighting, killing and watching it ever since… about 5,000 years. We still kill and we love to photograph the death, destruction and social turmoil. I’m glad I photograph our world’s beauty.

• If you see something beautiful, take a photograph of it. The world needs to see more beauty.

• Beware of the camera with all the ‘Smart Technology’. Use wisely, It can ruin you as a photographer.

• Photography, it is poetry in light.

• Some people like to hit little white balls into holes in the ground…. I like to take photo’s…. We’re all a bit mad in our own way.

• If you shift your mindset from photographing ‘things’ and start to photograph ‘light’, you will amaze yourself.

• With a photograph, I can stop and look.

• Take your camera off automatic. You are the photographer.

• Swimming against the tide is hard work… Sometimes I just need to float for a while.

• If you shift your mindset from photographing ‘things’ and start to photograph ‘light’, you will amaze yourself.

• Often, when I’m making a photograph, my camera just ‘ceases’ to exist.

• A photograph is your vision, held together by light.

• When I use a camera, I see the world more clearly.

• I have never run a workshop, but my first lesson would be, let’s meet by waters edge at sunrise but leave your camera be. Just look… and think… and feel, now tell me, what do you see?

• Little windows on my world. Moments captured. Stories told.

• Photography stops the world and lets us focus.

• I try to photograph what I feel… not what I see.

• For me, a photograph needs to be poetic.

• Photographers shine a light so that the world might see.

• I like to see that light is at work in a photograph.

• Film is like a good bottle of wine; rich in colours and tonality with a depth of character and complexity which you just don’t get from that flat ‘video’ look of digital. Like a good wine, film is also most enjoyable.