A good photograph is knowing where to stand. — Ansel Adams
A photographer who made a picture from a splendid moment, an accidental pose of someone or a beautiful scenery, is the finder of a treasure. — Robert Doisneau
Photography is the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision. — Sebastian Smee
Photography is the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision. — Sebastian Smeey
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
Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance. — Lewis Hine
A good photograph is like a good hound dog, dumb, but eloquent. — Eugene Atget
A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars. — Guy Le Querrec
Life is a journey, photography is thy shepherd. — 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
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
If a picture is worth a thousand words, photographers are worth a million. — Tupac Shakur
Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. — Paul Strand
Short Great Photography Quotes
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. — Dorothea Lange
Photography has every right and every merit to claim our attention as the art of our age. — Alexander Rodchenko
Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. — Marc Riboud
There is 3 key things for good photography: the camera,lighting and... Photoshop — Tyra Banks
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away. — Eudora Welty
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. — Aaron Siskind
Photography my passion, the search for truth, my obsession. — Alfred Stieglitz
Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality. — Mary Ellen Mark
If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time. — Robert Doisneau
Good photos have come when I least controlled the situation. — Gueorgui Pinkhassov
Great Photography Image Quotes
Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories. — Theodore Levitt
The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! — Ansel Adams
Silence is a source of great strength.
Powerful Photography Quotes
You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver) — Gordon Parks
Only powerfully conceived images have the ability to penetrate the memory, to stay there, in short to become unforgettable. — Brassai
The purpose of all my photos is to capture the power of nature and convey it in a way that inspires someone to feel passionate and connected to the image. — Peter Lik
Make today so awesome, yesterday gets jealous.
Aggregating all supply and allowing that supply to compete for audiences is how all platforms gain their power. — Jeff Booth
We know there is a very powerful fan base for Liverpool in Asia. We are not embarrassed to say we want to exploit that. — John W. Henry
If we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented. — Edgar Allan Poe
Great minds discuss ideas.Average minds discuss events.Small minds discuss people.
My passion is to open people's eyes to the sea using the power of photography as a universal language to convince the unconvinced among us that the oceans are fragile and finite. — David Doubilet
A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's 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. He's implicated in what's happening, and he has a certain real power over the result. — Richard Avedon
I believed it was necessary to investigate photography, dismantle it, jettison all the non-essential components, and begin again with a stripped down but more powerful idea of what is, or could be photographic. — Lewis Baltz
Because powerful images are fixed in the mind more readily than words, the photographer needs no interpreter. A photograph means the same thing all over the world and no translator is required. Photography is truly a universal language, transcending all boundaries of race, politics and nationality. — Arthur Rothstein
Beautiful Photography Quotes
A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person. — Saul Leiter
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. — Gregory Crewdson
Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. — Matt Hardy
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that. — Auguste Rodin
The beautiful part of the cloud is, you know, it’s unlimited capacity, in theory. — Eric Yuan
The world is full of beauty, you are the greatest proof of this. — Matshona Dhliwayo
Acknowledge all of your small victories. They will eventually add up to something great.
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
Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. — Edward Steichen
The beauty of women was the first expression of my photography. — Alberto Korda
I think people just see cinematography as being about photography and innovative shots and beautiful lighting. We all want our movies to look great visually, to be beguiling and enticing, but I think that what really defines a great cinematographer is one who loves story. — Seamus McGarvey
Good Photography Quotes
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. — Galen Rowell
If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture. — Eddie Adams
It's more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera — Sebastiao Salgado
You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
I hate good taste. It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person. — Helmut Newton
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
Nowadays, with digital printing, it's so easy to make everything perfect, which is not always a good idea. Sometimes the mistakes are really what make a piece. — Cindy Sherman
Failure is a great teacher, and, if you are open to it, every mistake has a lesson to offer.
There are two dirty words in photography, one is art, the other is good taste — Helmut Newton
There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough - there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph. — Robert Frank
Never stop looking, no matter where you are, everywhere there are good photographs — Art Wolfe
Science strives for answers, but art is happy with a good question. — James Turrell
Good Photographer Quotes
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. — Sally Mann
You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things. — Andy Warhol
What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. — Karl Lagerfeld
To a great mind, nothing is little.
We think of photography as pictures. And it is. But I think of photography as ideas. And do the pictures sustain your ideas or are they just good pictures? I want to have an experience in the world that is a deepening experience, that makes me feel alive and awake and conscious. — Joel Meyerowitz
There is no recipe for good layout, what must be maintained is a feeling of change and contrast. A layout man should be simple with good photographs. He should perform acrobatics when the pictures are bad. — Alexey Brodovitch
I like taking photographs, because I like life. And I like photographing people best of all, because most of all I love humanity. — Horst P. Horst
Average people have great ideas. Legends have great execution.
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. — Ansel Adams
Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good — Garry Winogrand
Photography is like making cheese. It takes a hell of a lot of milk to make a small amount of cheese just like it takes a hell of a lot of photos to get a good one. — Robert Gillis
Unless you photograph what you love, you're not going to make good art. — Sally Mann
Inspirational Photography Quotes
I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical. — Trent Parke
My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport. — Steve McCurry
Don't fear the failure... in great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life. — Joan Miro
Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow. — Imogen Cunningham
The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words. — Elliott Erwitt
Photography is about capturing souls, not smiles.
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
Photographs open doors into the past, but they also alloq a look into the future — Sally Mann
The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do. — Andy Warhol
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
Art Photography Quotes
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
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
I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. — Mark Rothko
The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography. — Helmut Newton
Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography. — El Lissitzky
The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects. — Wassily Kandinsky
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
I want to take some quite incredible photographs that have never been taken before... pictures which are simple and complex at the same time, which will amaze and overwhelm people ... I must achieve this so that photography can begin to be considered a form of art. — Alexander Rodchenko
I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer. — Irving Penn
Art is all about doing what you shouldn't. — Nobuyoshi Araki
Photography Quotes
It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head. — Henri Cartier-Bresson
Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop. — Ziad K. Abdelnour
I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do. — Sally Mann
The biggest cliche in Photography is Sunrise and Sunset. — Catherine Opie
Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities. — Michael Kenna
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. — William Eggleston
Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life. — Vincent Van Gogh
If you want to be a photographer, first leave home — Steve McCurry
What I like best about underwater photography is giving a visual voice to the invisible. What I like least is the prospect of drowning. — David Doubilet
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. — William Eggleston
Photography Love Quotes
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
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
I had a love for photography, which of course rolled into cinematography. — Scoot McNairy
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
In the act of love, as in photography, there is a form of life and a kind of slow death. — Nobuyoshi Araki
Reluctant as I am to regard myself as a style icon, I would love to think I could inspire older women to make the most of themselves. — Mary Berry
Photography is a love affair with life. — Burk Uzzle
I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance. — Alec Soth
Nature Photography Quotes
When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears. — Philippe Halsman
I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx. — Aaron Siskind
I’m interested in using the iconography of nature and the American landscape as surrogates or metaphors for psychological anxiety, fear or desire — Gregory Crewdson
The photogram, or camera-less record of forms produced by light, which embodies the unique nature of the photographic process, is the real key to photography. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
I do not object to retouching, dodging or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique. — Alfred Stieglitz
I find it some of the hardest photography and the most challenging photography I've ever done. It's a real challenge to work with the natural features and the natural light. — Galen Rowell
Photography is not only drawing with light, though light is the indispensable agent of its being. It is modeling or sculpturing with light, to reproduce the plastic form of natural objects. It is painting with light. — Berenice Abbott
I like small things, I like small moments that are almost elliptical, that are not necessarily linear; they're natural things that happen in the world, but if you look at them from a slight angle there's more than meets the eye. — Keith Carter
Photography, when used as a representational art, is not a mere copy of nature. This is proved by the rarity of the 'good' photograph. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible? — Duane Michals
Good Photo Quotes
The people on the streets just say 'hi' and let me walk on. They take relatively few photos, and those that do are tourists. Munich natives are relatively relaxed. They pretty much leave me in peace and I think that's very good. The Bavarian mentality fits very well to me. — Manuel Neuer
And what we called photojournalism, the photos seen in places like Life magazine, didn't interest me either. They were just not good-there was no art there. The first person who I respected immensely was Henri Cartier-Bresson. I still do. — William Eggleston
Credibility is a must. Think of all those bloggers that kill us with photos outside the shows - there will be a selection there, too. Not because some are less good, but those that do not impose a style will have fewer requests. — Franca Sozzani
A whopping 89 percent of buyers start their home search online. How your house looks online is the modern equivalent of 'curb appeal.' Rent a wide-angle lens and good lighting, get rid of your clutter and post at least eight great photos to win the beauty contest. — Barbara Corcoran
There's always [on women's magazines] that great photo of the actress or model lifting up her shirt just to show you the bone structure and the six-pack of her own. It's almost like when horses are auctioned and they show you their teeth. 'Am I good enough?' — Janeane Garofalo
I am not an artist, and I never intended to be one. I hope I have made some good photographs, but what I really hope is that I have done some good photo stories with memorable images that make a point, and, perhaps, even make a difference. — Cornell Capa
It's a very frustrated feeling you get when the only people with good photos of you work are the police department. — Banksy
Family photos, pictures of groups, those are truely wonderful. And they are just as good as the old masters, just as rich and just as beautifully composed (what does that mean anyway). — Gerhard Richter
I never take pictures. Skies are much larger in reminiscences and my friends are much better-looking. Photos crop reality into little squares; instead, I have very good binoculars. — Nell Zink
I have grown up but that should be a positive thing. When you look at a photo album it's lovely to remember being so young but it's also good to know you grew up! — Jenny Agutter
In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv. — Henri CartierBresson
Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life. — Henri Cartier-Bresson
Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers. — Brian Clark
Great marketing isn’t about having the largest audience; it’s about having the right audience. — Rand Fishkin
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
When looking for the biggest game, never ever, shoot at anything small. — Thomas Phelps
The important thing is not the camera but the eye. — Alfred Eisenstaedt
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
Don't shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like. — David Alan Harvey
It's seldom you make a great picture. you have to milk the cow quite a lot to get plenty of milk to make a little cheese. — Henri Cartier-Bresson
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
Put on a sweater and really great sneakers with a big scarf, and you’ll look so stylish. For me, they are an everyday essential. — Meghan Markle
The list of photographs that I am missing while I sit on airport runways, teach classes or spend hours in the studio makes my head spin. It's almost as if I can actually sense all the great pictures that I'm missing at a given moment. It's times like those that remind me to be very productive when I do get behind-the-camera time. — Brian Ulrich
The camera can photograph thought. — Dirk Bogarde
What a privilege and honour it has been to be part of seven years of magic in a tent – ‘The Great British Bake Off.’ — Mary Berry
I have always been a big fan of MAC! I like how the brand turns makeup into a form of self-expression which always gives me great confidence on stage. — Lisa Manoban
A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a great deal that's communicated about who this person is and what their life experiences have been. — Chuck Close
He opened the Premier League to the world in a different level to what any other manager has done. — Mikel Arteta
The biggest problem in correcting errors in the market is that stocks look best when they are at the peak and not so great when they are at the bottom. — Thomas Phelps
Travel is very subjective. What one person loves, another loathes. — Robin Leach
A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. — Edward Steichen
You know, my parents have always been incredibly supportive. I'm an only child, so we're very close. There's just the three of us. They're exceptional parents but also great friends. My father was able to take his hobby, photography, and turn it into a beautiful career. So when they saw how much I loved acting, they were 100 percent behind me. — Sophia Bush
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
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
There is one voyage, the first, the last, the only one. — Thomas Wolfe
But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living. — Fay Godwin
The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts. — Walker Evans
Great photography is always on the edge of failure. — Garry Winogrand
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
One of my challenges was to try to photograph the Great Wall of China. And I did actually take some photos, but it was hard to discern the wall with the naked eye. — Leroy Chiao
My clothes are great for a honeymoon: They’re light and sexy, colorful and pretty, and not expensive. — Diane Von Furstenberg
The instrument is not the camera but the photographer. — Eve Arnold
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of great photography quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about great photography to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of great photography quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
