300+ Photography Quotes – Best Quotes for Photographers
Photography is a powerful tool for preserving emotions, tales, and memories by freezing moments in time.
It captures the essence of the world and unveils its hidden beauty through the lens.
To enhance their art and evoke deeper meaning in their work, photographers often turn to inspiring quotes that resonate with their passion and vision.
Photography quotes serve as a wellspring of motivation, guiding photographers to explore new perspectives, ignite their creativity, and connect with their subjects on a profound level.
Let’s delve into a collection of the best photography quotes that encapsulate the essence of this remarkable art form.
Best Photography Quotes
When I make a picture, I make love. – Alfred Stieglitz
Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lenses of the camera. – Yousuf Karsh
A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know. – Diane Arbus
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
If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough. – Robert Capa
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. – Ansel Adams
Photography is the story I fail to put into words. – Destin Sparks
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
There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes. – Abraham Lincoln
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. ― Dorothea Lange
You don’t take a photograph, you make it. — Ansel Adams
A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks. -Richard Avedon
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ― Ansel Adams
There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. – Robert Frank
It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter. — Alfred Eisenstaedt
Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world. – Bruno Barbey
No place is boring if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film. – Robert Adams
Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times…I just shoot at what interests me at that moment. – Elliott Erwitt
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
For me, light is life – and the first light that I see is the sun. So, when I think about light, I think about the sun and nothing else. Window light is the most important light for me. When I take a picture using window light, I always think about what a long trip the light is making to reach my subject. – Paulo Roversi
In photography, there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated. – August Sander
Photography is like sex. You know the ending. So how can you make it interesting? ― Fer Juaristi
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
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
A good photograph is knowing where to stand. – Ansel Adams
Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print the performance. – Ansel Adams
Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. – Paul Strand
To photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. — Ansel Adams
If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no shortcuts in photography. – Edward Weston
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
My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport. — Steve McCurry
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. – Ansel Adams
I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these, I have about 800 pictures I like. – Harry Callahan
The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do. — Andy Warhol
A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people. — Annie Leibovitz
What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. ― Karl Lagerfeld
Photography is a love affair with life. – Burk Uzzle
In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. – Alfred Stieglitz
For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. – Dorothea Lange
We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us. — Ralph Hattersley
Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dared. Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. It’s the result it counts no matter how it’s achieved. – Bill Brandt
Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. – Imogen Cunningham
Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. – Marc Riboud
Photography is a language more universal than words. – Minor White
I don’t trust words. I trust pictures. – Gilles Peress
Photography is truth. – Jean-Luc Godard
A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they’ll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won’t do a thing for you if you don’t have anything in your head or in your heart. – Arnold Newman
Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies. – Diane Arbus
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
One should not only photograph things for what they are, but for what else they are. — Minor White
The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader. – Irving Penn
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. – Lewis Hine
I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been. ― Diane Arbus
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
A single photograph contains different images. — Daido Moriyama
I am forever chasing light. The light turns the ordinary into the magical. – Trent Parke
The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words. – Elliott Erwitt
Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. – Matt Hardy
All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow. – Leo Tolstoy
A landscape image cuts across all political and national boundaries; it transcends the constraints of language and culture. – Charlie Waite
Always always get a single shot of the bride. Editors love that. Guys are cute but the girls are hot. ― Jasmine Star
I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style. – Ken Burns
Photography is austere and blazing poetry of the real. – Ansel Adams
The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it. – Ansel Adams
All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. – Richard Avedon
A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. – Edward Steichen
I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can. – Billie Eilish
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
Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art. — Ansel Adams
You know, I really don’t think you learn from teachers. You learn from work. I think what you learn, really, is how to be – you have to be your own toughest critic, and you only learn that from work, from seeing work. – Garry Winogrand
It isn’t the alphabet that’s important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. – Andre Kertesz
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
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
What I have learned and what I teach now is all about experimentation and learning to pick yourself up and try again when you fall down. – Lara Jade
The camera is the eye of history. — Mathew Brady
Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. — Duane Michals
You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. ― Ansel Adams
Only photograph what you love. – Tim Walker
Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is. – Anon
The eye should learn to listen before it looks. – Robert Frank
Great photography is about the depth of feeling, not the depth of field. – Peter Adams
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
Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. – Walker Evans
If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it. – Jay Maisel
A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away. – Eudora Welty
Photography is for me, a spontaneous impulse that comes from an ever-attentive eye, which captures the moment and its eternity. – Henri Cartier Bresson
When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I’m human. It’s the same thing when I’m behind a camera. I forget I exist. – Robert Mapplethorpe
Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future. – Sally Mann
The Earth is art, the photographer is only a witness. – Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safe, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. – Cecil Beaton
Just be prepared to look back in a few years on yourself, and your photos, and laugh. – Ben Chrisman
It’s more important for a photographer to have very good shoes than to have a very good camera. — Sebastiao Salgado
One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time. — Annie Leibovitz
I don’t see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens. – Eve Arnold
Actually, it’s nature itself that creates the most beautiful pictures, I’m only choosing the perspective. ― Katja Michael
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them. – Diane Arbus
The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer. — Gordon Parks
Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments. – Alex Tehrani
John Loengard, the picture editor at Life, always used to tell me, ‘If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it. – Joe McNally
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
All the masterpieces of art contain both light and shadow. A happy life is not one filled with only sunshine, but one which used both light and shadow to produce beauty. – Billy Graham
Photographing a culture in the here and now often means photographing the intersection of the present with the past. – David DuChemin
Light is beautiful and if you expose to it, it will look awesome. ― Daniel Aguilar
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
I don’t think there’s any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent. – Imogen Cunningham
It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators. – Ansel Adams
Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. – Ansel Adams
I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs. – Wayne Miller
When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
A photograph is a moral decision taken in one-eighth of a second. – Salman Rushdie
Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships. — Ansel Adams
Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph. – Andre Kertesz
If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that’s a good picture. – Eddie Adams
When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things. — Wynn Bullock
To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs. – Sam Abell
It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head. — Henri Cartier-Bresson
In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people. — James Wilson
Today everything exists to end in a photograph. ― Susan Sontag
Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like. – David Alan Harvey
You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it. – Anon
It’s not enough to just own a camera. Everyone owns a camera. To be a photographer, you must understand, appreciate, and harness the power you hold! – Mark Denman
Photography helps people to see. – Berenice Abbott
Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter. – Ansel Adams
Sometimes, people don’t really say what they’re really thinking. But when you capture the right moment, it says more. – Jonathan Byers
My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph. – Richard Avedon
I am always mentally photographing everything as practice. – Minor White
So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful. – Susan Sontag
Without music, life would be a mistake. – Friedrich Nietzsche
If you see something that moves you and then snap it, you keep a moment. – Linda McCartney
For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations. – Paul Cézanne
The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality. – Scott Lorenzo
Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise the film; they advertise memories. – Theodore Levitt
Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop. – Ziad K. Abdelnour
What’s really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer. – William Albert Allard
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear. – Alfred Eisenstaedt
I believe that everyone wears a mask, and beneath that mask is another mask. So what photographers can reveal are the various masks we all wear. – Matthew Rolston
Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment. – Ansel Adams
Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. ― Henri Cartier-Bresson
The most important thing at a wedding is to photograph the bride. The second most important thing is not to forget the groom. – Alix Reuters
A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into. – Ansel Adams
When you acquire an understanding of the science behind light and what governs it, then you can predict its behavior and control the lighting in your photographs. – Roberto Valenzuela
Most of my photos are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face. — Steve McCurry
I didn’t choose photography. Photography chose me. – Gerardo Suter
The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. – William Thackeray
For a Photographer – Having an observant mind is more important than having an expensive camera. ― Sukant Ratnakar
If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff. — Jim Richardson
I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed. – Annie Leibovitz
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
If I saw something in my viewfinder that looked familiar to me, I would do something to shake it up. – Garry Winogrand
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
I have seized the light. I have arrested its flight. – Louis Daguerre
I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles are. – Elle VonUnwerth
Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work. – Martin Parr
What matters is making pictures that make people feel and react to them. ― Fer Juaristi
When people ask me what equipment I use – I tell them my eyes. – Anonymous
The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world. – Orson Welles
Every artist I suppose has a sense of what they think has been the importance of their work. But to ask them to define it is not really a fair question. My real answer would be, the answer is on the wall. – Paul Strand
It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get. – Timothy Allen
A photograph is like a recipe the memory is the finished dish. – Carrie Latet
Photography is usually viewed as a solitary activity, but the truth of the matter is that people love to shoot together, compare notes, and just have fun with photography. – Scott Kelby
Photography is an itch that won’t go away. No matter how much you scratch it. — Dara McGrath
Photographing a cake can be art. – Irving Penn
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
Allow yourself to be surprised by your mistakes. ― Fer Juaristi
All the planning, intuition, technical prowess, and knowledge, as well as the trust and rapport you have (or haven’t) established, will show up in the picture, frozen forever. – Gregory Heisler
Creativity needs to extend beyond the lens. Find creative ways to showcase your work and get it seen. Straight up tenacity, hard work and determination will always be part of the equation, so get to it. – Jimmy Chin
The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography. — Helmut Newton
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. ― Mahatma Gandhi
I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph. – Leon Levinstein
If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer. – Eve Arnold
That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject; you cannot do it by not being lost yourself. – Dorothea Lange
The context in which a photograph is seen affects the meaning the viewer draws from it. – Stephen Shore
With creating, we are literally bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before. – Montana Dennis
Essentially what photography is life lit up. — Sam Abell
Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good. – Garry Winogrand
The unexpected moment is always sweeter. – Julia Quinn
If you haven’t viewed a photograph for at least 30 minutes, you haven’t really seen it. – Minor White
The camera’s only job is to get out of the way of making photographs. – Ken Rockwell
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. – Ludwig van Beethov
Maybe because it’s entirely an artist’s eye, patience and skill that makes an image and not his tools. – Ken Rockwell
Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it. – Salvador Dalí
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
Unless you photograph what you love, you’re not going to make good art. – Sally Mann
What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time. – John Berger
My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain. – Helmut Newton
I want to do the definitive picture of the person in the moment, I say it all the time and it’s the clearest way that I can describe what I do. Honor the art form. Take pictures that are going to last forever. -Jonathan Mannion
Whosoever possesses a camera should never know boredom. – Wayne Gerard Trotman
A camera can get you close without the burden of commitment. It’s a nifty device that way, a magical passport into people’s lives with no permanent strings attached. — Nina Berman
If you force it and you keep looking for moments then you’ll end up shooting what you think the wedding should look like rather than actual moments that are unfolding in front of you. – Joe Buissink
God creates beauty. My camera and I are a witness. – Mark Denman
I believe photographers should shoot what they want, not shoot what they get. – Roberto Valenzuela
I fight to take a good photograph every single time. — Annie Leibovitz
A photograph is the pause button on life. – Ty Holland
My photography is the result of being there at the right moment. – Rene Burri
The best camera is the one that’s with you. – Chase Jarvis
It’s weird that photographers spend years or even whole lifetime trying to capture moments that, added together, don’t even amount to a couple of hours. – James Lalropui Keivom
Photography is an art of teleporting the past into the future. — Mehmet Murat ildan
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
Light is inseparable from the shadow. Shadow lives on the edge of the light. Shadow complements the light. It evokes feeling and imagination; it transforms ordinary objects into extraordinary subjects. – Danie Bester
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
My aesthetic gets simpler every year as I rely less on gimmicks and more on powerful content. ― Anna Kuperberg
The Painter constructs, the photographer composes. – Susan Sontag
We don’t learn from our good images; we learn from the ones that can be improved on. – Jen Rozenbaum
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
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. – Jonathan Swift
Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness. – Yousuf Karsh
I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.- George Lucas
The beauty of women was the first expression of my photography. — Alberto Korda
You can’t teach people photography, they’ve got to learn how to do it the best way possible for them. They can learn from looking at pictures… but they don’t really get intimate with the medium until they’ve made a few bad shots. – Cecil Beaton
Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn’t look like somebody else’s work. – William Klein
The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it? — Edward Weston
A photojournalist makes snap decisions; based on the ability to quickly assess situations and record one’s perceived truth. – Jack Dykinga
Allow yourself the freedom to step away from perfection because it is only then that you can find success. – Chase Jarvis
If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, it’s a street photograph. – Bruce Gilden
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. ― Ansel Adams
Photography is the beauty of life captured. – Tara Chisolm
A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person life that reveal greater truths. – Anon
Photographs are just light and time. – Aza Holmes
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
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
I’ll always be an amateur photographer. – Elliott Erwitt
The surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us. – Boris Pasternak
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. ― Ansel Adams
Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well. – Lewis Carroll
Black and white is abstract; color is not. Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world. – Joel Sternfeld
Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption. – Andre Bazin
I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste. – Marcel Duchamp
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase. – Percy W. Harris
A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity. – George Bernard Shaw
Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel? – Duane Michals
The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer. – Robert Mapplethorpe
A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, the Testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was. – Philippe Halsman
Some days you just get lucky Other days you wait patiently for luck to happen. – Destin Sparks
You need to have done your research about any story you immerse yourself into. I’ll find out who/what/where, etc., before embarking on any trip, but once there, you have to trust your instincts to ensure you find a powerful image. — Ashley Gilbertson
It is a profound honor as a photographer to witness two people falling in love. – Jesh de Rox
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
In the end, photography for me is just an excuse to get to know the world. — Graciela Iturbide
We don’t take pictures with cameras, we take them with our hearts and minds. – Arnold Newman
A camera is a SAVE button for the mind’s eye. – Roger Kingston
Only a photographer can stop time. Just by one click. ― Biju Karakkonam
Photography has nothing to do with cameras. – Lucas Gentry
Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell. — Kim Edwards
I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, wandering around finding things. To me, it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance. – Alec Soth
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary. – Aaron Rose
Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location. – Joe McNally
Get out of that frame of mind of trying to make someone else happy. ― Joe Buissink
In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color. – William Albert Allard
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 an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past. – Berenice Abott
A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph. – Man Ray
For ‘Star Wars’ I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography. – George Lucas
The camera can photograph thoughts. — Dirk Bogarde
If you don’t have anything to say, your photographs are not going to say much. – Gordon Parks
To me, photography must suggest, not insist or explain. – Brassai
I’ve always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception. — James Balog
There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. – Robert Heinecken
I shudder to think how many people are underexposed and lacking depth in this field. – Rick Steves
I think of photography as therapy. – Harry Gruyaert
The way that light hits objects, I think, is one of the more important things that sculpture and photography share. – Rashid Johnson
There’s something strange and powerful about black-and-white imagery. – Stefan Kanfer
Always seeing something, never seeing anything, that’s being a photographer. – Walter De Mulder
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. – Alice Walker
Every photograph has an equivalent idea or emotion attached to it. – Alfred Stieglitz
A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said ‘I love your pictures – they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.’ He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: ‘That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove. – Sam Haskins
Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening. – Aretha Franklin
The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth. – Harold Evans
Stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. – Brian Eno
I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse. – Diane Arbus
Look, I’m not an intellectual – I just take pictures. – Helmut Newton
I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today’s existence. – Robert Mapplethorpe
It’s no accident that a photographer becomes a photographer any more than a lion tamer becomes a lion tamer. -D. Lange
Beauty is in the eye of the checkbook holder. – Dean Collins
When I make a photograph I feel that I hold a piece of the universe in my hands. – Paul Chaplo
Photograph the world as it is. Nothing’s more interesting than reality. — Mary Ellen Mark
I have shots for her. Now, these shots are for me. – Jasmine Star
The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer. – Steven Pinker
Photography, at its best, goes far beyond the style of an individual; like the soul, it need not always be explained. —Raghu Rai
Photography is empathy towards the world. – Lewis Hine
There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement. – Galen Rowell
I have dream photography allows me to share it with you. ― Destin Sparks
Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it. – Morley Baer
Always keep the direction of the light source clearly in mind and keep asking yourself, ‘How light is it?’ and ‘How dark is it? – Leoni Duff
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
Smile a lot. Be a good listener. Don’t be afraid to go after what you want, in the photos and the business. And get a great accountant. ― Daniel and Lindsay Stark
A photograph shouldn’t be a picture, it should be a philosophy. – Amit Kalantri
Photography is the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision. – Sebastian Smee
Results are uncertain even among the more experienced photographers. – Matthew Brady
Photography is a major force in explaining man to man. – Edward Steichen
Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That’s the thing about painting, photography, cinema. -David Lynch
The photographer does the world a great disservice when she leaves her camera at home. — Mark Denman
The best pictures differentiate themselves by nuances a tiny relationship either a harmony or a disharmony that creates a picture. – Ernst Haas
A good photographer records; a great photographer reveals. – Skyler Reid
Fear is the thing that prohibits a lot of photographers from reaching their full potential. — Collin Pierson
Sharpness is a bourgeois concept. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance. – Lewis Hine
Only photography has been able to divide human life into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence. – Eadweard Muybridge
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 the inspiration to information. – Man Ray
There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. – Charles Morgan
I have a vision of life, and I try to find equivalents for it in the form of photographs. – Alfred Stieglitz
I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do – that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. – Diane Arbus
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. – Plato
A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you. – BRIGITTE BARDOT
The significant problems we face in life cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. – Albert Einstein
You just have to live and life will give you pictures. – Henri Cartier Bresson
What we see depends mainly on what we look for. – John Lubbock
Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary. – Matthew Knisely
I think that the photographer’s best weapon is their own personality. I love to meet people and to spend time chatting with them before I start to make photographs. It puts them at ease and it gives me clues to their personalities. – Albert Watson
No matter how sophisticated the camera, the photographer is still the one that makes it.– Doug Bartlow
Photography has the power to undo your assumptions about the world. — Aaron Huey
If I can dig deeper and show more of who people are, aside from it being a wedding day, then I feel I’ve succeeded. Usually, at the end of the night, that comes out. The party’s over, and they one hundred percent become themselves. – Tyler Wirken
Photography quotes capture the essence of this art form, inspiring photographers worldwide. From “Photography is the story I fail to put into words” to “A picture is worth a thousand words,” these quotes celebrate the power of visual storytelling.
So grab your camera, chase the light, and with these Photography quotes, fuel your passion for capturing moments that speak louder than words.