PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES

Photography quotes can be inspiring reading, provocative and challenge Your photographic mindset.

Below You find a selection sorted by Author.

Google the Author and check out their work


It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter. - Alfred Eisenstaedt


When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear. - Alfred Eisenstaedt

 

Wherever there is light, one can photograph. - Alfred Stieglitz


In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. - Alfred Stieglitz


Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. - Ambrose Bierce


Perception isn’t reality, it’s the only reality. - Amy and Jordan Demos


Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is t

hat I have made. - Andy Goldsworthy

 

The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do. - Andy Warhol

 

The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed. - Anne Geddes

 

I think that emotional content is an image’s most important element, regardless of the photographic technique. Much of the work I see these days lacks the emotional impact to draw a reaction from viewers, or remain in their hearts. - Anne Geddes

 

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

 

I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed. - Annie Leibovitz

 

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

 

One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and on. It’s on all the time. - Annie Leibovitz

 

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I’d like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph. - Annie Leibovitz


I feel more like a creative artist using photography because there’s – the digital work is so interesting now. It’s come to that. I have had many different

stages of photography - there are many different ways to take photos. But I feel now I’m in that stage of my life where I use the camera, you know,

in that way. - Annie Leibovitz


When people ask me what equipment I use - I tell them my eyes. - Anonymous


Once photography enters your bloodstream, it is like a disease. - Anonymous


You don’t take a photograph, you make it. - Ansel Adams


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

 

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. - Ansel Adams

 

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. - Ansel Adams

 

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

 

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. - Ansel Adams

 

In photography, there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated. - August Sander


Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know. - Ben Shahn

 

Photography helps people to see. - Berenice Abbott


Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.- Berenice Abbott

 

Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved. - Bill Brandt

 

I threw myself into this artform because photography had given me a new sense of mission and identity. - Bob Anderson

 

I love the people I photograph. I mean, they’re my friends. I’ve never met most of them or I don’t know them at all, yet through

my images I live with them. - Bruce Gilden

 

Photography is a love affair with life. - Burk Uzzle


A photograph is like a recipe - memory the finished dish. - Carrie Latet


A photograph is memory in the raw. - Carrie Latet


Fear is the thing that prohibits a lot of photographers from reaching their full potential. - Collin Pierson

 

When a moment in front of me appears to be particularly special, whether it be by beauty or experience, I capture it. I usually find a reason to justify taking that photo - symmetry, or color, or contrast - and it’s my hope that my photography sheds light onto what I see and do on a daily basis. - Connor Franta

 

Contrast is what makes photography interesting. - Conrad Hall

 

Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like. - David Alan Harvey

 

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary. - David Bailey

 

Photographing a culture in the here and now often means photographing the intersection of the present with the past. - David DuChemin

 

Why do we use flash at all? Because photography is not the same as eyesight. We can see in low-light situations where cameras, dependent upon a physical process to record visual information, are half-blind. - David Hewson

 

Photography is the story I fail to put into words. - Destin Sparks


Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies. - Diane Arbus

 

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them. - Diane Arbus

 

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know. - Diane Arbus

 

I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse. - Diane Arbus

 

Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures. - Don McCullin

 

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. - 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. - Dorothea Lange

 

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. - Dorothea Lange


Photography is about capturing souls not smiles. - Dragan Tapshanov

 

A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. - Edward Steichen

 

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it? - Edward Weston

 

To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. - Edward Weston

 

The more you photograph, the more you realize what can and what can’t be photographed. You just have to keep doing it. - Eliot Porter

 

I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles are. - Ellen Von Unwerth

 

To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. - Elliott Erwitt

 

It’s about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy. - Elliott Erwitt

 

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words. - Elliott Erwitt

 

There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are. - Ernst Haas

 

I am not interested in shooting new things – I am interested to see things new. - Ernst Haas

 

A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away. - Eudora Welty


If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer,

not the camera, that is the instrument. - Eve Arnold

 

I began to realize that the camera sees the world differently than the human eye and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed. - Galen Rowell

 

Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts. - Garry Winogrand

 

Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth,

and you will know the key to photography. - George Eastman

 

I didn’t choose photography, photography chose me. - Gerardo Suter


For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate. - Giles Duley

 

I don’t trust words. I trust pictures. - Gilles Peress


The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer. - Gordon Parks

 

I love this life. I feel like I am always catching my breath and saying, ‘Oh! Will you look at that?’ Photography has been my way of bearing witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary life. You don’t look for pictures. Your pictures are looking for you. - Harold Feinstein


I think of photography like therapy. - Harry Gruyaert


Your first 1,000 photographs are your worst. - Henri Cartier-Bresson


Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation. - Henri Cartier-Bresson


To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event. - Henri Cartier-Bresson


Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. - Imogen Cunningham


A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it.

It is, in a word, effective. - Irving Penn

 

Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting. - Jack Lowden

 

Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true. - Jacques-Henri Lartigue


I’ve always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception. - James Balog


In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people. - James Wilson


When you photograph a face… you photograph the soul behind it. - Jean-Luc Godard


Photography is truth. - Jean-Luc Godard


We don’t learn from our good images; we learn from the ones that can be improved on. - Jen Rozenbaum

 

Clients love pictures where they’re laughing versus just smiling. That’s because there’s emotion behind it.

Because you’re capturing energy, not just a still image. - Jen Rozenbaum

 

If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff. - Jim Richardson

 

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life. - Joan Miro

 

You cannot possibly hit the shutter without leaving a piece of you in the image. - Joe Buissink

 

Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location. - Joe McNally


What makes a photograph a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time. - John Berger

 

What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. - Karl Lagerfeld

 

I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph. - Leon Levinstein


If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. - Lewis Hine

 

My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even have in my mind, but to explore the potential of moments

I can only begin to imagine. - Lois Greenfield

 

Photography has nothing to do with cameras. - Lucas Gentry


Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. - Marc Riboud


To me, the magic of photography, per se, is that you can capture an instant of a second that couldn’t exist before and couldn’t exist after. It’s almost like a cowboy that draws his gun. You draw a second before or after, you miss and you’re dead – not them. To me, photography’s always like that. - Mario Testin

 

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it. - Martin Parr

 

Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work. - Martin Parr

 

Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. - Matt Hardy

 

Results are uncertain even among the more experienced photographers. - Matthew Brady

 

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world. - Orson Welles

 

Photography is like a moment, an instant. You need a half-second to get the photo.

So it’s good to capture people when they are themselves. - Patrick Demarchelier

 

It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are. - Paul Caponigro

 

Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. - Paul Strand


It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness. - Paul Strand

 

Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. - Paul Strand


Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase. - Percy W. Harris


Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field. - Peter Adams


Photography is not about cameras, gadgets and gizmos. Photography is about photographers. A camera didn’t make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel. - Peter Adams


Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself. - Peter Lindbergh

 

We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us. - Ralph Hattersley


There’s a time when people say your work is revolutionary, but you have to keep being revolutionary. I can’t keep shooting pop stars all my life. You have to keep changing, keep pushing yourself, looking for the new, the unusual. - Rankin

 

My photography is the result of being there at the right moment. - Rene Burri


All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. - Richard Avedon


No place is boring if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and a pocket full of unexposed film. - Robert Adams

 

If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough. - Robert Capa


The pictures are there, and you just take them. - Robert Capa


Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. - Robert Frank

 

There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. - Robert Frank

 

The eye should learn to listen before it looks. - Robert Frank


When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice. - Robert Frank

 

There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. - Robert Heinecken

 

The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer. - Robert Mapplethorpe


A camera is a SAVE button for the mind’s eye. - Roger Kingston


Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future. - Sally Mann

 

Essentially what photography is is life lit up. - Sam Abell


The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality. - Scott Lorenzo

 

Photography is the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision. - Sebastian Smee

 

Photography is my passion. Whenever I get time, I click. - Shaheer Sheikh


There’s something strange and powerful about black and white imagery. - Stefan Kanfer

 

I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really believe in. - Steve McCurry

 

My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport. - Steve McCurry

 

The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer. - Steven Pinker

 

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world. - Steven Pinker

 

The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation. - Susan Meiselas

 

Today everything exists to end in a photograph. - Susan Sontag


Photography is the beauty of life captured. - Tara Chisolm


When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white,

you photograph their souls! - Ted Grant

 

Only photograph what you love. - Tim Walker


Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment

and a lifetime of pleasure. - Tony Benn

 

Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness. - W. Eugene Smith

 

I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs. - Wayne Miller


You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools

you have and probe deeper. - William Albert Allard

 

The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. - William Thackeray

 

When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things. - Wynn Bullock


The earth is art, the photographer is only a witness. - Yann Arthus-Bertrand


Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera. - Yousuf Karsh

 

Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness. - Yousuf Karsh


Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything. - Aaron Siskind