Photography quotes from famous photographers can teach us a lot. This blogpost which captures 230 Photography quotes from famous photographers can not only teach you many things but also become a ready list that you can use to post photography quotes on Instagram or any Social Media.
I have been photographing for almost 12 years now and I often read these quotes and get inspired. Some basic quotes like " A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into." by Ansel Adams can teach us a lot. As a photographer when I read these Photography quotes these always remind me to look beyond the obvious while taking a photograph.
These 250 Photography Quotes will surely inspire you. My suggestion is to go through every photography quotes and ponder upon the deeper meaning. Trust me these photography quotes will help you to learn a lot.
If you are in a Hurry You can Pin It on Pinterest for later reading or else scroll below to read the photography quotes
230 Photography Quotes from Famous Photographers
So here are the photography quotes from famous photographers in no particular order. Read it, get inspired by it, and improve your photography.1. A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what
is being photographed - Ansel Adams
This is one of my favorite quotes and has helped to be better my photography. If you ponder on this photography quote you will realize that the great photographer Ansel Adams wants us to click and take photographs beyond the obvious. Whenever I click now I always try to delve into the deeper meaning which I am trying to show through the photograph.
2. Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. –
Imogen Cunningham
3. Why print this picture. The reason is that words are never enough. – Life magazine 1943
4. For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. - Henri Cartier Bresson
5. A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into. - Ansel Adams
6. A good photograph is knowing where to stand. - Ansel Adams
This is another quote which I follow. Everytime I plan to click a moment I think where I am standing whether the place where I am standing to photograph will give the best view of the moment.
This is another quote which I follow. Everytime I plan to click a moment I think where I am standing whether the place where I am standing to photograph will give the best view of the moment.
7. The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. - Susan Sontag
8. My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.-
Steve McCurry
9. Essentially what photography is, is life lit up. –Sam Abell
10. Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what if feels like. – David Alan Harvey
I remember on a shoot with Raghu Rai, he told me that he clicks from his heart and not mind. If your heart connects and flickers with emotion while you make a photograph it means you have captured a moment through your photograph which will touch emotions. Such is the power of photography quotes.
I remember on a shoot with Raghu Rai, he told me that he clicks from his heart and not mind. If your heart connects and flickers with emotion while you make a photograph it means you have captured a moment through your photograph which will touch emotions. Such is the power of photography quotes.
11. A camera didn’t make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel.-
Peter Adams
12. If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.– Robert Capa
This photography quote is something I swear by. If someone has to make a great photograph then you need to be in the moment to capture the image. You can only create a great photograph if you are close to the subject.
This photography quote is something I swear by. If someone has to make a great photograph then you need to be in the moment to capture the image. You can only create a great photograph if you are close to the subject.
13. Photography is putting one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis. – Henri Cartier Bresson
14. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been. ― Diane Arbus
15. Sometimes I arrive just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter. ― Ansel Adams
16. Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.– Anon
17. The camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.– Henri Cartier Bresson
18. Seeing is not enough. You have to feel what you photograph. – Andre Kertesz
19. Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.– Percy W. Harris
I often quote from this list of photography quotes when someone sees my photograph and asks which camera do I use. Buying a great camera doesn't make you a good photographer. You can make great images with just a 2 Mega Pixel phone camera.
I often quote from this list of photography quotes when someone sees my photograph and asks which camera do I use. Buying a great camera doesn't make you a good photographer. You can make great images with just a 2 Mega Pixel phone camera.
20. The best view comes after the hardest climb. – Anon
21. Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world. – Bruno Barbey
This is one of my favorite photography quotes. A pictures says thousand words and this photography quote truly depicts it.
This is one of my favorite photography quotes. A pictures says thousand words and this photography quote truly depicts it.
22. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.
Robert Heinecken
23. How do we start taking pictures of people, and stop taking pictures of poses?
Justin and Mary Marantz
24. The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.
Elliott Erwitt
25. 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
26. When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things. – Wynn Bullock
27. 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
28. I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really believe in. – Steve McCurry
29. Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. – Marc Riboud
30. What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.— Karl Lagerfeld
31. Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories. – Theodore Levitt
32. When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not. ― Aleksandar Hemon
33. Photography is a magical kind of art that allows people to preserve time and moments, and to describe the world the way they see it. ― Sahara Sanders
This photography quote by Sahara Sanders I truly follow. What I am doing is now I am taking photographs , and printing it and keeping it stored so that generations can see the moments preserved.
This photography quote by Sahara Sanders I truly follow. What I am doing is now I am taking photographs , and printing it and keeping it stored so that generations can see the moments preserved.
34. Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future. – Sally Mann
35. The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do
Andy Warhol
36. Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell. ― Kim Edwards
37. Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. – Dorothea Lange
38. There is one thing the photograph must contain – the humanity of the moment. – Robert Frank
39. 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
40. A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person’s life that reveal greater truths. – Unknown
41. A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away. – Eudora Welty
42. Today everything exists to end in a photograph. ― Susan Sontag
43. Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. – Paul Strand
44. I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost. ― Nan Goldin
45. 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
46. Photography is austere and blazing poetry of the real. – Ansel Adams
47. This is what I like about photographs they’re proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.– Jodi Picoult
48. The beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. – Matt Hardy
49. The best camera is the one that’s with you. – Chase Jarvis
50. Available light is any damn light that is available. ― Eugene Smith
51. Contrast is what makes photography interesting. – Conrad Hall
52. The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer. – Robert Mapplethorpe
53. Twelve significant photographs in one year is a good crop. – Ansel Adams
54. I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these, I have about 800 pictures I like.
Harry Callahan
55. For me, pointing and clicking my phone is absolutely fine. People say that isn’t the art of photography but I don’t agree. – Annie Lennox
56. Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.– Edward Weston
57. Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. – Dorothea Lange
58. A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.
Annie Leibovitz
59. Great photography is about the depth of feeling, not the depth of the field.
Peter Adams
60. I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.
Gilles Peress
61. It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.
– Alfred Eisenstaedt
62. Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
– Diane Arbus
63. If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough. – Robert Capa
64. Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. – Marc Riboud
65. Your first 1,000 photographs are your worst. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
66. The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.
– Andy Warhol
67. You don’t take a photograph, you make it. – Ansel Adams
68. There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. – Ansel Adams
69. Photography helps people to see. – Berenice Abbott
I completely believe in this Photography quotes. After I started taking photographs I have started actually seeing and observing things actively and not passively.
I completely believe in this Photography quotes. After I started taking photographs I have started actually seeing and observing things actively and not passively.
70. What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. – Karl Lagerfeld
71. When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear. – Alfred Eisenstaedt
72. How do we start taking pictures of people, and stop taking pictures of poses?
Justin and Mary Marantz
73. With creating, we are literally bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before.
Montana Dennis
74. I believe photographers should shoot what they want, not shoot what they get.
Roberto Valenzuela
75. 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
76. There’s something strange and powerful about black-and-white imagery. – Stefan Kanfer
77. 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
78. 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
79. I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed. – Annie Leibovitz
80. Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.– Man Ray
81. Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. – Ambrose Bierce
82. Wherever there is light, one can photograph. – Alfred Stieglitz
83. Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved. – Bill Brandt
84. The pictures are there, and you just take them.– Robert Capa
85. The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it? – Edward Weston
86. 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
87. 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
88. A photograph is like a recipe memory of the finished dish. – Carrie Latet
89. In photography, there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated. – August Sander
90. The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. – William Thackeray
91. 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
92. 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
93. 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
94. 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
95. Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location. – Joe McNally
96. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.– Richard Avedon
97. When people ask me what equipment I use – I tell them my eyes. – Anonymous
98. I’ve always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception. – James Balog
99. I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them. – Diane Arbus
100. Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true. – Jacques-Henri Lartigue
101. I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs. – Wayne Miller
102. 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
103. 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
104. Results are uncertain even among the more experienced photographers. – Matthew Brady
105. In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people.
– James Wilson
106. If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. – Lewis Hine
107. Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.– Sally Mann
108. Today everything exists to end in a photograph. – Susan Sontag
109. Once photography enters your bloodstream, it is like a disease. – Anonymous
110. A camera is a SAVE button for the mind’s eye. – Roger Kingston
111. 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
112. When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things. – Wynn Bullock
113. We don’t learn from our good images; we learn from the ones that can be improved on.
– Jen Rozenbaum
114. If you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a moment. – Linda McCartney
115. There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.– Ansel Adams
116. 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
117. I didn’t choose photography, photography chose me. – Gerardo Suter
118. 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
119. 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
120. 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
121. To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary plac
