166 Photography And Light Quotes

Following is our list of photography and light quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about simple photography.

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Famous Photography And Light Quotes

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

Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance. - Lewis Hine

Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance. — Lewis Hine

Wherever there is light, one can photograph. - Alfred Stieglitz

Wherever there is light, one can photograph. — Alfred Stieglitz

There is 3 key things for good photography: the camera,lighting and... Photoshop — Tyra Banks

In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated. — August Sander

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

The principal person in a picture is light. — Edouard Manet

Photography helps people to see. — Berenice Abbott

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

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. — Ansel Adams

Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure. — Le Corbusier

Light is the most important person in the picture. - Claude Monet

Light is the most important person in the picture. — Claude Monet

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world. — Steven Pinker

We are writing stories with light and darkness, motion and colors. It is a language with its own vocabulary and unlimited possibilities for expressing our inner thoughts and feelings. — Vittorio Storaro

Short Photography And Light Quotes

  • Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop — H. L. Mencken
  • Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. — Aaron Siskind
  • Photography is a strange phenomenon... You trust your eye and cannot help but bare your soul. — Inge Morath
  • Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. — Dorothea Lange
  • Photography is a major force in explaining man to man. — Edward Steichen
  • Photography my passion, the search for truth, my obsession. — Alfred Stieglitz

Photography And Light Image Quotes

Photography and light quote To trust God in the light is nothing, but to trust him in the dark, that is faith.
To trust God in the light is nothing, but to trust him in the dark, that is faith.

Photography Day 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

To see something spectacular and recognise it as a photographic possibility is not making a very big leap. But to see something ordinary, something you’d see every day, and recognize it as a photographic possibility - that is what I am interested in. — Stephen Shore

And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible. — Richard Avedon

Photography and light quote If you want light to come into your life, you need to stand where it is shining.
If you want light to come into your life, you need to stand where it is shining.

There’s always something to do in the space program. It’s so varied. You don’t do the same thing twice in any given moment of any day. — John Young

I like to fight on the ground. I’m learning every day. I think I’m good. — Joanna Jedrzejczyk

Contrary to the general belief about photography, you don't need bright sunlight: the best moodiest pictures are taken in the dim light of almost dusk, or of rainy days. — Jack Kerouac

Photography and light quote I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the star
I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars.

Films are getting expensive by the day. They are making more money by the day. — Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

I think that’s what’s so fun about fashion: that I don’t have to be defined by one particular style. It’s whatever I’m feeling that day. — Sadie Sink

I’m a guy who doesn’t really care about glamour and big markets; I like to be home all day. — Giannis Antetokounmpo

My days are always changing, as some days, I’m on a shoot, or I will be DJing in the middle of the day or evening. — Hannah Bronfman

Simple Photography Quotes

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

The hardest thing in photography is to create a simple image. — Anne Geddes

I photograph from the heart. I adore little babies and I think that shows. My images are really very positive, very simple, and from the heart. Babies speak a universal language. — Anne Geddes

Photography and light quote A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.

Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity; be intensely yourself. Don't try to be outstanding; don't try to be a success;don't try to do pictures for others to look at- just please yourself. — Ralph Steiner

To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures. — Harry Callahan

The business of making a photograph may be said in simple terms to consist of three elements: the objective world (whose permanent condition is change and disorder), the sheet of paper on which the picture will be realized, and the experience which brings them together. — Aaron Siskind

Photography and light quote Photography is about capturing souls, not smiles.
Photography is about capturing souls, not smiles.

I like to work in the real world, so I do a lot of searching or just simple looking. But I'm not above tweaking reality and making something up. I don't think there are any rules in art. It's not so much what you see as it is the significance you, the artist, see in it. — Keith Carter

The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good. — Ansel Adams

My theory of composition? Simple: do not release the shutter until everything in the viewfinder feels just right. — Ernst Haas

It's often about the simple things, isn't it? Painting and photography are first about seeing, they say. Writing is about observing. Technique is secondary. Sometimes the simple is the most difficult. — Linda Olsson

Camera And 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

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

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

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

Photography and light quote You have to find what a sparks a light in you so that you in your own way can illuminate the world.
You have to find what a sparks a light in you so that you in your own way can illuminate the world.

My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport. — Steve McCurry

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

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

Photography and light quote If you want to give light to others you habe to glow yourself.
If you want to give light to others you habe to glow yourself.

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

It seems positively unnatural to travel without taking a camera along... The very activity of taking pictures is soothing and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. — Susan Sontag

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! - Ansel Adams

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! — Ansel Adams

Photography is a very subtle thing. You must let the camera take you by the hand, as it were, and lead you into your subject. — Margaret Bourke-White

Light And Color Quotes

In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light. — Hans Hofmann

I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color in a way they have never experienced. — Dale Chihuly

It is the color closest to light. In its utmost purity it always implies the nature of brightness and has a cheerful, serene, gently stimulating character. Hence, experience teaches us that yellow makes a thoroughly warm and comforting impression. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Photography and light quote If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.

Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, gradually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark blue, to violet and then to black. What an indescribable gamut of colors! Just like the paintings of the artist Nicholas Roerich. — Yuri Gagarin

A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more. — John Steinbeck

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. — John Burroughs

Photography and light quote There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

Say you write a song about a chandelier, and the chandelier gives off light. And the light is the color red and red reminds you of the color your not supposed to wear around a bull. So you name the song 'Cow.' — Billy Corgan

Over the years, in making art, I have constantly explored issues dealing with space, time, light, and society. I am particularly interested in how the light of a space determines how we see that space and similarly, in how light and color are actually phenomena within us, within our own eyes. — Olafur Eliasson

Just as white light consists of colored rays, so reverence for life contains all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy, peacefulness and power to forgive. — Albert Schweitzer

The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow. Take your own color in the pattern and be just that. — Charles R. Brown

Photography Quotes

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person. — Saul Leiter

Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop. - Ziad K. Abdelnour

Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

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

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

Photography and light quote The tiny seed knew that in order to grow it needed to be dropped in dirt, covered in darkness, and s
The tiny seed knew that in order to grow it needed to be dropped in dirt, covered in darkness, and struggle to reach the light.

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

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

Photography and light quote It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

The body says what words cannot. — Martha Graham

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

Photography And Film Quotes

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

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

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

The important thing is not the camera but the eye. — Alfred Eisenstaedt

Ultimately photography is about who you are. It's the truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit. — Leonard Freed

To me if there's an achievement to lighting and photography in a film it's because nothing stands out, it all works as a piece. And you feel that these actors are in this situation and the audience is not thrown by a pretty picture or by bad lighting. — Roger Deakins

The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. — Richard Avedon

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 reason we think that computer graphics technology has succeeded in faking reality is that we, over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, have come to accept the image of photography and film as reality. — Lev Manovich

I was drawn to photography as an extension of film, and the beauty of film is that it's a sensuous, fetishistic medium. — Anton Yelchin

Art Photography Quotes

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

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

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

The pictures are there, and you just take them. — Robert Capa

There are two dirty words in photography, one is art, the other is good taste — Helmut Newton

Never stop looking, no matter where you are, everywhere there are good photographs — Art Wolfe

Color Photography Quotes

One very important difference between color and monochromatic photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state. Much can be implied by suggestion, but statement demands certainty... absolute certainty. — Paul Outerbridge

When you photograph people in color you photograph their clothes. When you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their soul! — Ted Grant

Seeing the Earth for the first time in orbit, you will be surprised that you never noticed the quality and texture of colors. — Peggy Whitson

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

Photography has always been associated with death. Reality is colorful, yet early photography always took the color out of reality and made it black-and-white. Color is life; black-and-white is death. There was a ghost hidden in the invention of photography. — Nobuyoshi Araki

In black and white you suggest, in color you state. — Paul Outerbridge

I believe that the essence of photography is black and white. Color is but a deviance. — Sarah Moon

Only in black and white can I see the design and textures. I don't consider color photography art. Black and white is an interpretation. Color is a duplication. — Clyde Butcher

My clothes are great for a honeymoon: They’re light and sexy, colorful and pretty, and not expensive. — Diane Von Furstenberg

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face. — Edward Steichen

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 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

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

Photography is a love affair with life. — Burk Uzzle

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

Only photograph what you love. — Tim Walker

Photography And Travel Quotes

NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself. — Walt Whitman

Being a working mom and traveling as well with a baby, my goodness it’s a lot, but it’s all so exciting. — Meghan Markle

Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment. — Galen Rowell

Travel is very subjective. What one person loves, another loathes. — Robin Leach

I travel light. I think the most important thing is to be in a good mood and enjoy life, wherever you are. — Diane Von Furstenberg

I am a traveler. I am a nomad. I rarely sleep in the same bed more than three or four nights. And I know hotel life better than anyone. — Diane Von Furstenberg

There is one voyage, the first, the last, the only one. — Thomas Wolfe

I enjoy traveling and recording far-away places and people with my camera. But I also find it wonderfully rewarding to see what I can discover outside my own window. You only need to study the scene with the eyes of a photographer. — Alfred Eisenstaedt

To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance. — Phillip Adams

Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigor — Seneca

People Writing About Photography And Light

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz
quotes on art, photography and education

46 473
Read quotes by George Eastman

George Eastman
quotes on education, life and love

17 369
Read quotes by Lewis Hine

Lewis Hine

10 252
Read quotes by Tyra Banks

Tyra Banks
quotes on modeling

82 1142
Read quotes by August Sander

August Sander
quotes on art, life and artwork

12 70
Read quotes by Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet

30 307

More Photography And Light Quotes

Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. — Marc Riboud

It's about finding meaning through light. I'm always interested in tensions. A primary one is the collision between the familiar and the strange. — Gregory Crewdson

If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it. — John Loengard

Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk. — Edward Weston

Photography is thus brought within reach of every human being who desires to preserve a record of what he sees… and enables the fortunate possessor to go back by the light of his own fireside to scenes which would otherwise fade from memory and be lost. — George Eastman

Photography is painting with light! The blurs, the spots, those are errors! But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting. And for that you need as bad a camera as possible! If you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you're doing worse than anyone else in the whole world. — Miroslav Tichy

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

Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush. It is as vital as the model herself. Profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. Light I acknowledge as the energy upon which all life on this planet depends. — Ruth Bernhard

The greatest tool at our command is the very thing that is photography. Light. Light is our paintbrush and it is a most willing tool in the hands of the one who studies it with a sufficient care. — Laura Gilpin

At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'. — Paul Caponigro

You don't make a photograph just with a camera — Ansel Adams

Color is seductive. It changes as it interacts with other colors, it changes because of the light falling upon it, and it changes as it becomes larger in size. — Jay Maisel

Available light is any damn light that is available! — W. Eugene Smith

You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles. — Joe McNally

Light makes photography. Embrace light. — George Eastman

I don't want anyone to appreciate the light or the palette of tones. I want my pictures to inform, to provoke discussion - and to raise money. — Sebastiao Salgado

My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady. — Sam Abell

Essentially, in photography, I think on two levels: one emotional and the other technical. The emotional impact has to do with looking for something dramatic happening in the photograph, something that reaches out and touches somebody in some way. And the technical is having to do with composition and framing - light and dark, light and shadow. — Leonard Nimoy

Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens. — Franz Kafka

And I was very successful at baby photography... Strange isn't it? Because some of my portraits of babies were - I used dramatic lighting, shadow lighting, and I didn't use flash. We didn't have flash in those days, we just had floodlights, and I was photographing babies as I would an object - an inanimate object, for that matter. — Julius Shulman

Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe. — Ruth Bernhard

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

I find that in the process of making a film you're constantly discovering things that you never even imagined would work at the beginning. Actors come into the film and do things you never even imagined. Production designers come in, the director of photography lights it in a way that you never imagined. So, it's always evolving, always exciting. — Peter Jackson

I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself. — Edward Steichen

I think that digital is offering many great possibilities for cinematographers. Particularly in urban cityscapes and low light photography its allowing us to render what we actually see with our eyes; which is interesting. — Seamus McGarvey

The camera is not only an extension of the eye but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future. Instead of using the camera only to reproduce objects, I wanted to use it to make what is invisible to the eye - visible. — Wynn Bullock

The raw materials of photography are light and time and memory. — Keith Carter

I think there is an element of magic in photography - light, chemistry, precious metals - a certain alchemy. You can wield a camera like a magic wand almost. Murmur the right words and you can conjure up proof of a dream. I believe in wonder. I look for it in my life every day; I find it in the most ordinary things. — Keith Carter

But I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they're taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it's a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it's unacceptable, and I like that contradiction. — Damien Hirst

Light is the photographic medium par excellence; it is to the photographer what words are to the writer; color and paint to the painter; wood, metal, stone, or clay to the sculptor. — Andreas Feininger

One has to tiptoe lightly and steal up to one's quarry; you don't swish the water when you are fishing. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity. To indicate the ideal proportion, to reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal. — Ruth Bernhard

After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavours and from there it just blossomed. I have always had to have an outlet for my creativity and when my life became more about raising my family than the bright lights of show business exploring my photo art was a great outlet for me. — Angela Cartwright

In the beginning of my photography I controlled everything: rearranging the room, lighting it, and telling people what to do and where to put their hands. By the last project, I was basically totally at the mercy of serendipity. — Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today. — Edward Abbey

Most photographers go and photograph something that they see, that exists, and that somebody else has created - they document it. But fashion photographers have to create what they're going to photograph. We have to go into the thought and build it up, get a girl, get a guy, get a situation, get the house, get the decor. It's the meaning of the word photography: "writing with light." — Mario Testino

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