Herb Keppler's wisdom

On the joys of collecting:
"Among the many things I resent about digital imaging is the slamming of the door on one of my favorite hobbies, camera collecting. Aside from getting a discontinued model cheap to use as a backup, can you tell me why someone would be excited about buying an obsolete digital camera for any purpose other than to use as a doorstop?"
(Popular Photography & Imaging, August 2007)

Film is here to stay:
"No, no, dammit, film is not going to disappear, so stop writing me scaredy-cat letters about how 'we duffers are gonna fade away silently clutching the last rolls of Kodachrome to our breasts.'"
(Popular Photography & Imaging, September 2007)

Relating a comment by renowned photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt:
"After Nikon introduced the first motordrive-compatible in 1954 (2.5 fps), I asked Eisie if he ever used a motor. 'Never,' said Eisie. 'It might miss something that this would have caught.' He wiggled his shutter release finger at me."
(Popular Photography & Imaging, April 2007)

If you were alone on a deserted island and could only have one camera and lens, what would it be?
"An all-mechanical Nikon F with a coupled selenium meter (no battery) and a 105mm macro lens to photograph flora and fauna, big and small, and to take a fine portrait of the person who rescues me!"
(Popular Photography & Imaging, August 2006)

Herbert Keppler: 1925-2008

Remembering a great photographer, journalist, savant, mentor and gentleman...

Herbert Keppler -- Herb or Burt -- was known throughout the world for his extremely popular columns Speaking Frankly and SLR in the American magazine and arguably the world's most read photography journal, Popular Photography. During his 57-year career as a writer, editor and publisher of photographic magazines, which earned him a worldwide reputation as one of the most respected and revered authorities in the photographic field, he also did a lot to popularise Japanaes cameras and Japanese technology.

On 4 January 2008 Herbert Keppler died peacefully in his sleep, after a short illness, at Phelps Memorial Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, New York, with his wife Louise, daughter Kathy and son Thomas at his side.

Read Jason Schneider's tribute to Keppler here:

In Memoriam: Herbert Keppler, 1925-2008

Some memorable quotes from the old master:

The Wit and Wisdom of Herbert Keppler

For Pop Photo's special Burt Keppler click here

Picasso

Pablo Picasso, the greatest (in my humble opinion!!) of 20th-century artists (NB: not just painters!), is supposed to have said:

"I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn."

One of the great apocryphal quotes of the century??

Quotes from Giants # 2

Ansel Adams

"""""

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.


There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.


Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.

The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.


"""""

Henri Cartier Bresson

The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

"""""

Dorothea Lange

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

"""""

Eudora Welty


A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

"""""

Mary Ellen Mark

I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul.

"""""