50 Great Photography Quotes
By Geoff Harris •
Photography can sometimes be a solitary occupation, and so it’s fascinating to see what other photographers have said about their own experiences. After browsing through several different sites, I picked out a list of 50 quotes which particularly appealed to me, either for inspiration or for amusement!
1) “Photography is the art of frozen time… the ability to store emotion and feelings within a frame” - Meshack Otieno
2) “Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.” - Ambrose Bierce
3) “Photography is my meditation” - Czar Anthony Lopez
4) “Every time someone tells me how sharp my photos are, I assume that it isn't a very interesting photograph. If it were, they would have more to say.” - Author Unknown
5) “Some photographers take reality...and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation.” - Ansel Adams
6) “Photography is all about light, composition and, most importantly, emotion.” - Larry Wilder
7) “Buying a Nikon doesn’t make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner.” - Author unknown
8) "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop" - Ansel Adams
9) “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” - Dorothea Lange
10) “The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.” - W. Eugene Smith
11) "The photographic image ... is a message without a code." -Roland Barthes, French thinker.
12) "I shutter to think how many people are underexposed and lacking depth in this field." - Rick Steves, travel guide and author.
13) "...the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads—as an anthology of images." -Susan Sontag, On Photography
14) "Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption." - André Bazin (1918–1958), French film critic.
15) "To visualize an image (in whole or in part) is to see clearly in the mind prior to exposure, a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print." -Ansel Adams, The Camera
16) "These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me." -Ansel Adams, in the preface of Jacob a Riis: Photographer & Citizen
17) "The term accessories has come to include a host of photographic gadgets of questionable value..." -Ansel Adams, The Camera
18) "I am always surprised when I see several cameras, a gaggle on lenses, filters, meters, et cetera, rattling around in a soft bag with a complement of refuse and dust. Sometimes the professional is the worst offender!" -Ansel Adams, The Camera
19) "To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things." -Ansel Adams
20) "Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter." -Ansel Adams
21) "There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept." -Ansel Adams
22) "There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." -Ansel Adams
23) "A good photographer is knowing where to stand." -Ansel Adams
24) "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." -Robert Capa
25) "Life is like a good black and white photograph, there's black, there's white, and lots of shades in between." -Karl Heiner
26) "You press the button and we do the rest." -Kodak advertisement …….(not any more you don’t)
27) "You don't take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it." -Pentax advertisement
28) "I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn." -Pablo Picasso
29) "...everything looks worse in black and white."-Paul Simon, Kodachrome, from Negotiations And Love Songs 1971-86
30) "Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures." -Susan Sontag, On Photography
31) "When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself." -Edward Steichen, quoted in Penelope Niven's Steichen: A Biography
32) "A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever." -Mark Twain
33) "Photography is 90% sheer, brutal drudgery!" -Brett Weston
34) "Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic." -Edward Weston
35) "Buying a Nikon camera does not make you a photographer - it makes you a Nikon camera owner" –anonymous
36) "No photographer is as good as the simplest camera" -Edward Steichen
37) "F8 and be there" -Ken Rockwell
38) "A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos" -Henri Cartier-Bresson
39) The only thing that gets in the way of a really good photograph, is the camera" -Norman Parkinson.
40) 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" -David Bailey
41) "Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does" -John Berger
42) "Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships!" –Ansel Adams
43) "The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt" -Henri Cartier-Bresson
44) After 40 years of ingesting every aspect of photographic science and composition, I still find the camera to be an endlessly intriguing partner that challenges my imagination and knowledge. All that with only 3 variables of shutter speed, aperture and focal length" -Ralph Auletta
45) “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” -Dorothea Lange
46) “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
47) “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
48) Look, I'm not an intellectual - I just take pictures.” Helmut Newton
49) “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
50) “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” -Ansel Adams
If you have any favourite quotes about photography, let us know!
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