For the past year or so, I've used Fridays as the "quote of the day" on Daily Photo Tips. The quotes have run the gamut -- from technical to inspirational, from humorous to serious -- and today I felt like using a few quotes from master painter Claude Monet.

Though photography, in contrast to most other forms of creative expression, is a subtractive form of art (meaning that while a painter begins with a blank canvas and adds color and form to that blank canvas, the photographer begins with an entire scene and subtracts everything except what he or she feels is necessary in an image)...we can still learn how to see things as additive artists see them.

Here are some quotes from Monet...

"For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value."

"No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition."

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."

"I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers."

"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment."