Photographer Quotes

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera.

.. they are made with the eye, heart and head.

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been. A Fresh Look at Diane Arbus

I see pictures all the time. I could stay for hours and watch a raindrop.

I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.

Only photography has been able to divide human life into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence.

You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either.

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

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.

I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.

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.

My desire is to preserve the sense of people’s lives, to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back.

I like to make people a little uncomfortable.

It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.

The plant never lapses into mere arid functionalism;

it fashions and shapes according to logic and suitability, and with its primeval force compels everything to attain the highest artistic form.

Once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.

For most people to be happy, there has to be a person, place, or thing involved in their happiness. In true happiness, there are no things involved. It's a natural state. You will abide in that state forever.

Wherever there is light, one can photograph.

A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

I don't have a burning desire to go out and document anything.

It just happens when it happens. It's not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn't do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough.

The truly fashionable are beyond fashion.

Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities.

The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography.

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.

My botanical documents should contribute to restoring the link with nature.

They should reawaken a sense of nature, point to its teeming richness of form, and prompt the viewer to observe for himself the surrounding plant world.

If photographers are responsible for creating or reflecting an image of women in society, then I must say, there is only one way for the future, and this is to define women as strong and independent. This should be the responsibility of photographers today: to free women, and finally everyone, from the terror of youth and perfection.

I am very attracted by bad taste-it is a lot more exciting than that supposed good taste which is nothing more than a standardized way of looking at things.

I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.

What I like best about underwater photography is giving a visual voice to the invisible. What I like least is the prospect of drowning.

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

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

If I give someone a horsetail he will have no difficulty making a photographic enlargement of it - anyone can do that. But to observe it, to notice and discover its forms, is something that only a few are capable of.

There's something within you that knows what to do.

There is a power greater than you that knows how to take care of you without your help. All you've got to do is to surrender to it. Surrender your thoughts, your mind, your ego, to the current that knows the way. It will take care of you. It will take better care of you than you can ever imagine.

Often people ask what I'm photographing, which is a hard question to answer.

And the best what I've come up with is I just say: Life today.

My images are unashamedly idyllic and romantic, a kind of enchanted Africa.

They're my elegy to a world that is steadily, tragically vanishing.

I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects.

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.

Let us leave a splendid legacy for our children.

..let us turn to them and say, this you inherit: guard it well, for it is far more precious than money...and once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.

Never pray to God for release of your problems.

Never pray to God to change your life, and to give you something better. This is wrong prayer. If you have to pray to God, pray to God to give you the strength and the wisdom and the courage that you need to be able to handle the situation that you're in. This is correct prayer.

My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough.

I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear.

One of the things my career as an artist might say to young artists is: The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best. And unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art.

I always thought if I photographed anyone or anything enough, I would never lose the person, I would never lose the memory, I would never lose the place. But the pictures show me how much I've lost.

There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work.

When I saw I was under attack from all sides, I knew I was on the right track.

Yes, photography saved my life. Every time I go through something scary, traumatic, I survive by taking pictures.

I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words.

It is in the wild places, where the edge of the earth meets the corners of the sky, the human spirit is fed.

If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.

More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure.

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

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life.

How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.

Life wanted faces that would express what we wanted to tell.

Not just the unusual or striking face, but the face that would speak out the message from the printed page. I am always looking for some typical person or face that will tie the picture essay together in a human way.

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