I'm the world's most famous photographer, most sought after photographer, most awarded photographer. — Peter Lik
A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars. — Guy Le Querrec
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be. — Edward Weston
A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere. — Bill Brandt
Some people`s photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that`s fine. But that`s not why I do them. I`m a gun for hire. — Helmut Newton
If a picture is worth a thousand words, photographers are worth a million. — Tupac Shakur
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
The creative life of the commercial photographer is like the life of a butterfly. Very seldom do we see a photographer who is really productive for more than eight or ten years. — Alexey Brodovitch
If I am at a party, I want to be at the party. Too many photographers use the camera to avoid participating in things. They become professional observers. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Photographers, along with dentists, are the two professions never satisfied with what they do. Every dentist would like to be a doctor and inside every photographer is a painter trying to get out. — Pablo Picasso
There are a lot of cameramen but not so many photographers. And a lot of cameramen attack from a technical approach without much imagination. They look, but they don't see. — Gordon Willis
If you want to be a photographer, first leave home — Steve McCurry
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
A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed — Richard Avedon
It's a choice - there are two different sorts of photographer: those obsessed with the technicalities and those obsessed by the subject. — Mario Testino
Short Professional Photographer Quotes
I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose. — W. Eugene Smith
A good photograph is knowing where to stand. — Ansel Adams
It's more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera — Sebastiao Salgado
You don't take a photograph, you make it. — Ansel Adams
For a photographer, the first 70 years are a bit difficult, but after that things get better. — Robert Doisneau
There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. — Robert Heinecken
The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. — Marc Riboud
If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time. — Robert Doisneau
Professional Photographer Image Quotes
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. — Aaron Siskind
A photograph is the pause button of life.
Good Photographer 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
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
If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture. — Eddie Adams
Every artist was first an amateur.
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
A good photograph is like a good hound dog, dumb, but eloquent. — Eugene Atget
Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.
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
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
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
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
I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical. — Trent Parke
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
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
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
Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. — Matt Hardy
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it ... Autograph your work with excellence. — Vince Lombardi
In a sense, every work you do is a self-portrait because your paintings always reveal more about you than about your subject. Your experience of something, not the something itself, is the true underlying subject of every work you do. — Richard Schmid
To double your success, triple what you spend on personal development and professional learning. The person who know the most becomes the best.
The tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world . — Agnes Varda
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
Portraits are the most intimate photographs. The image will survive the subject. — Victor Skrebneski
I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.
As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It's a trace. — Henri Cartier-Bresson
A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. — Edward Steichen
It says in the Bible, in plain words, that God made a self-portrait. He created man in His own image - man and woman - for God is Love.Why should we start thinking of a god up in the clouds with wings, if He dwells within us in the spirit of Love?! — Thor Heyerdahl
Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Camera And Photography Quotes
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
No matter how sophisticated the camera, the photographer is still the one that makes the picture.
There is 3 key things for good photography: the camera,lighting and... Photoshop — Tyra Banks
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
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
A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space. — Garry Winogrand
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
Digital Photography Quotes
Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow. — Imogen Cunningham
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
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
Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption. — Andre Bazin
In the digital world of today, one can say almost nothing is local. — John W. Henry
The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. — Richard Avedon
As an avid photographer, I also took advantage of the latest technology in photography - digital photography - to post photos on my website on a daily basis. — Tipper Gore
... while in theory digital technology entails the flawless replication of data, its actual use in contemporary society is characterized by the loss of data, degradation, and noise; the noise which is even stronger than that of traditional photography. — Lev Manovich
Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information. — Man Ray
I don't think that digital photography is romantic yet. It's not sympathetic the way that film is. — Matthew Modine
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
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
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
Science strives for answers, but art is happy with a good question. — James Turrell
Fashion Photography Quotes
Very often I say to myself: I would like to make a photo where nothing happens. But in order to eliminate, there has to be something to begin with. For nothing to happen, something has to happen first. — Sarah Moon
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
For me, fashion is one of the biggest changes. I never got to wear Chanel or anything like that, growing up, or really experience fashion the way I get to now. — Sadie Sink
Since I was a little girl, I have always been interested in make-up and fashion. — Lisa Manoban
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’ve always kind of had this interest in fashion. — Sadie Sink
What I find interesting is working in a society with certain taboos and fashion photography is about that kind of society. To have taboos, then to get around them that is interesting. — Helmut Newton
I love fashion, and I simply enjoy good design in clothes and regard that as one of my hobbies. — Martha C. Nussbaum
I’ve been working seriously in giving fashion a place that it deserves. — Diane Von Furstenberg
I'm not a social person. Not that I'm not at ease. I'm pretty good, but it bores me. Not the people, but the whole thing. What for? It's not very productive. I only want to do what I have to do: fashion, photography, books. And that's all. — Karl Lagerfeld
War Photographer Quotes
It became the middle finger I couldn’t raise in PR photographs. The mustache became my silent last word in the verbal battles I was losing with higher headquarters on rules, targets, and fighting the war. — Robin Olds
Art has no place in modern life. It will continue to exist as long as there is a mania for the romantic and so long as there are people who love beautiful lies and deception... Every modern cultured man must wage war against art, as against opium... Photograph and be photographed. — Alexander Rodchenko
For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war. — James Nachtwey
The war photographer's most fervent wish is for unemployment — Robert Capa
I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal. — James Nachtwey
... the blinding Hiroshima flash... literally photographed the shadow cast by beings and things, so that every surface immediately became war's recording surface, its film. — Paul Virilio
I will be remembered when I'm in heaven. People won't remember my name, but they will know the photographer who did that picture of that nurse being kissed by the sailor at the end of World War II. Everybody remembers that. — Alfred Eisenstaedt
The photographs of one dead terrorist mastermind carry no real news or information about the nature or horror of war. They just create sensation instead of deeper understanding. — Philip Gourevitch
I would that my photographs might be, not the coverage of a news event, but an indictment of war. — W. Eugene Smith
Documentary Photography Quotes
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
Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. — Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photography has always been about documentary, the depiction of the instant, a moment, sometimes a place. Each project is somehow an experimentation of a specific context or a character. — Hedi Slimane
Documentary: That’s a sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear… The term should be documentary style… You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. — Walker Evans
A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph. — Dorothea Lange
What I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach to photography is the addition of lyricism.[this quality] is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman. — Walker Evans
I have always felt that a lot of the most interesting work, not just mine but other people's, falls into [the] nether area, somewhere between the worlds of documentary and photojournalism (two very vague words) and the world of art. I think a lot of street photography falls into this nether area. — Alex Webb
To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships. — Aaron Siskind
Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidence. And yet... the genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world. — Allan Sekula
[Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928) — Pierre Mac Orlan
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
British diplomats, constantly exposed to American political-ethical rhetoric, find their professional skills tested to the limits by the need to keep a straight face. For illustrations of what I mean, study the photographs of the expressions worn by Mr Douglas Hurd at any international conference involving all the Western allies. — Conor Cruise O'Brien
I think not being a professional photographer was actually a blessing, because it allowed me to shoot things professional photographers wouldn't shoot, or wouldn't try or attempt to shoot without lights. So I did all my stuff natural and without lights. — Dennis Hopper
Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography - that of classing supposedly excellent work as professional, and using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs. — Alfred Stieglitz
There's nothing worse than a brilliant beginning. — Pablo Picasso
Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole. — John Maynard Keynes
It pleases me to take amateur photographs of my garden, and it pleases my garden to make my photographs look professional. — Robert Breault
Every photograph that is made whether by one who considers himself a professional, or by the tourist who points his snapshot camera and pushes a button, is a response to the exterior world, to something perceived outside himself by the person who operates the camera. — Eliot Porter
Thus, during the winter of 2003 I ventured into a new arena as a professional photographer. — Janine Turner
By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule. — Bill Brandt
I am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation. — Elliott Erwitt
As a professional photographer I take photographs for other people to see - but I want them to see what I see. So I never assume that only a few people will appreciate what I do. At all times, the public should be able to understand what I've done, even if they don't understand how I've done it. — Elliott Erwitt
What some highbrows call rapport is nothing more than a mild flirtation between photographer and the girl on the other side of the camera. Some models get so professional they can send hours flirting with the camera itself while the poor photographer is reduced to the role of spectator. — Sam Haskins
I think the greatest photographers are the amateur photographers who do it because they love it. Arnold Newman is a good example; he is a consummate professional, but he's also an 'amateur' in the pure sense of the word. — John Sexton
If the quality of professional materials continues to erode or even dries up, then many of us silver photographers would have to follow the digital tidal wave. It certainly wouldn't be the end of the world, but in my opinion, having no silver material available would be a huge loss to photography. — Michael Kenna
When assignments were over, photography continued. One of the primary reasons it did was that I wanted and needed to have fresh work. Also, it's very stimulating to be around non-professional photographers. They're the ones with the purest flame burning about their photography. I appreciate that. — Sam Abell
When I gave up my office job and became a full-time professional photographer, my fortunes certainly improved markedly. We moved away from the council estate into our own house and for the first time in my life, I had a little spare money. — Derek Ridgers
In some areas, [Getty Images has] more images than the rest of the market put together. But libraries are being built up at a terrific pace. A photographer in a lifetime will produce maybe a million images, and there are about 15,000 professionals at work out there. — Mark Getty
Any photographer worth his/her salt - that is, any photographer of professional caliber, in control of the craft, regardless of imagistic bent - can make virtually anything look good. Which means, of course, that she or he can make virtually anything look bad - or look just about any way at all. After all, that is the real work of photography: making things look, deciding how a thing is to appear in the image. — A. D. Coleman
... I'm sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It's not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool. — Dennis Hopper
Believe in yourself. Listen to the photographers you work with, and try to be professional at all time. — Alessandra Ambrosio
Photojournalism has become a hybrid enterprise of amateurs and professionals, along with surveillance cameras, Google Street Views, and other sources. What is underrepresented are those "metaphotographers" who can make sense of the billions of images being made and can provide context and authenticate them. We need curators to filter this overabundance more than we need new legions of photographers. — Fred Ritchin
There is enormous need for professionals who know how to tell stories with narrative punch and nuance, who can work proactively and not just reactively, and whose approach is multi-faceted. We need more "useful photographers." — Fred Ritchin
The pictures from the first professional photo session that the young David
Beckham submitted himself to are extraordinary. He has a barely suppressed
smile, as though he and the cameraman are complicit in the understanding
that this is not yet David Beckham we see and that there is an element of
deceit in selling the photographs as such — Julie Burchill
For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it truthfully. Look at the reporters and at the amateur photographer! They both have only one goal; to record a memory or a document. And that is pure photography. — Andre Kertesz
I'm an amateur photographer, apart from being a professional one, and I think maybe my amateur pictures are the better ones. — Elliott Erwitt
If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a long-term professional friendship during which they continue to work together and to produce highly personal images. — Eve Arnold
Usually the amateur is defined as an immature state of the artist: someone who cannot — or will not — achieve the mastery of a profession. But in the field of photographic practice, it is the amateur, on the contrary, who is the assumption of the professional: for it is he who stands closer to the (i)noeme(i) of Photography. — Roland Barthes
Theres no such thing as Flickr Pro because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, theres no such thing, really, as professional photographers when theres everything thats professional photographers. Certainly theres varying levels of skills but we didnt want to have a Flickr Pro anymore. We wanted everyone to have professional quality photo space and sharing. — Marissa Mayer
I am a professional photographer because it is the best way I know to earn the money I require to take care of my wife and children. — Irving Penn
It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly, as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes 'art' in time. — Alfred Stieglitz
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