In this post, we’ve put together 200+ of the most memorable, inspirational and thought-provoking quotes about photography.
Inspirational Quotes
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.— Ambrose Bierce
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.― Ansel Adams
Beauty, picturesqueness, and all loveliness are the food of art. ― Henry Peach Robinson
Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. – Imogen Cunningham
Why print this picture. The reason is that words are never enough. – Life magazine 1943
Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. ―Robert Frank
I’m so drawn to photography because you can convey a complex story in a single frame. I feel like I can communicate much better-using images than words. – Gia Coppola
The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality. — Scott Lorenzo
I felt that I had to go. A spirit in my feet said ‘go’ and I went. – Matthew Brady
If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner, it is that there are no shortcuts in photography. – Edward Weston
Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness. – Yousuf Karsh
My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.— Steve McCurry
Dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction the better – as a gift from the Gods not to be lightly denied by convention or prior concepts. – Edward Weston
The word art is very slippery. It really has no importance in relation to one’s work. I work for pleasure, for the pleasure of the work and everything else is a matter for the critics. – Manuel Alverez Bravo
A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people. – Annie Leibovitz
Don’t listen to what they say. Go see. – Chinese Proverb
A photograph is a moral decision taken in one-eighth of a second. ― Salman Rushdie
Essentially what photography is, is life lit up. –Sam Abell
A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rumbling past. It makes reality come true. ― Don Delillo
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. ― Dorothea Lange
You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo. No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. – Joel Sternfeld
Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what if feels like. – David Alan Harvey
I believe in instinct. One should never dull it but want to know everything. – Josef Sudek
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
I didn’t choose photography, photography chose me.– Gerardo Suter
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
I’ve always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception. – James Balog
A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know. ― Diane Arbus
If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.— Jim Richardson
Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts. – Walker Evans
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. – Ansel Adams
I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.– Harry Callahan
A camera didn’t make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel. ― Peter Adams
If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.– Robert Capa
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
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
In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color. – William Albert Allard
Just as I work with paints, brushes, and canvas, I work with light, pieces of glass, and chemistry. ― August Sanders
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 deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. – Duane Michals
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.– Man Ray
The camera has always been a guide, and it’s allowed me to see things and focus on things that an average person wouldn’t even notice. – Don Chadwick
No place is boring if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and a pocket full of unexposed film.– Robert Adams
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
Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.– Peter Adams
The camera always points both ways. In expressing your subject, you also express yourself. – Freeman Patterson
The important thing is, you have to have something important to say about the world. – Paul Strand
Photography can be a volatile situation. It can be very potent. – Platon
In photography, there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.— August Sander
Photography is putting one’ s eye and one’s heart on the same axis. – Henri Cartier Bresson
My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been. ― Diane Arbus
Sometimes I arrive just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter. ― Ansel Adams
Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.– Anon
Photography can be a powerful instrument for change, and photojournalists can tell stories that make a difference. – Brian Skerr
There are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them. – Diane Arbus
Photography has always been a major part of my vision: my excuse for meddling with what the world looks like. – Robert Rauschenberg
Photography gives us. a feeling of the structure of things with an intensity which the eye. Has hitherto been quite unable to perceive. – Otto Steinert
It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us. ― Henri Cartier-Bresson
Our best pictures are our footprints. It’s the best way to tell people we were here. – Joe McNally
Photography is all about light, composition, and most importantly emotion. – Larry Wilder
For me, the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It’s that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom. – John Sexton
The camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.– Henri Cartier Bresson
Circumstantial light considers not only all the properties and behaviors of natural light, but also how that light interacts with the objects around [you], so that [you] can transform those objects into light-shaping tools.– Roberto Valenzuela
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
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
I could never figure out why photography and art had separate histories. So I decided to explore both. – John Baldessari
Photography is without mercy–though it’s nonsense to say it does not lie. Rather, it lies in a particular, capricious way which makes beggars of ministers and gods of cat’s meat men. – Nick Harkaway
Seeing is not enough. You have to feel what you photograph. – Andre Kertesz
The context in which a photograph is seen affects the meaning the viewer draws from it.― Stephen Shore
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.– Percy W. Harris
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
The best view comes after the hardest climb. – Anon
Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world. – Bruno Barbey
The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance. – Ansel Adams
There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. – Robert Heinecken
How do we start taking pictures of people, and stop taking pictures of poses? – Justin and Mary Marantz
The two most engaging powers of a photographer are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. – William Thackeray
We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer. ― Criss Jami
In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. – Alfred Stieglitz
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
I believe photographers should shoot what they want, not shoot what they get. – Roberto Valenzuela
The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words. ― Elliott Erwitt
No, you don’t shoot things. You capture them. Photography means painting with light. And that’s what you do. You paint a picture only by adding light to the things you see. ―Katja Michael
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. –Elliot Erwitt
Ultimately, photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive when it thinks. ― Roland Barthes
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
We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us. — Ralph Hattersley
There’s a time when people say your work is revolutionary, but you have to keep being revolutionary. I can’t keep shooting pop stars all my life. You have to keep changing, keep pushing yourself, looking for the new, the unusual. – Rankin
Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change that facts.– Garry Winogrand
The question is not what you look at but what you see. – Henry Thoreau
When life gets blurry adjust your focus. When people ask what equipment I use, I tell them my eyes. – Ansel Adams
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
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
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
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.– Dorothea Lange
When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things. – Wynn Bullock
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
Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments. – Alex Tehrani
With creating, we are literally bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before.– Montana Dennis
Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.– David Alan Harvey
The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is no mean function. Man is the most complicated thing on earth and also as naive as a
tender plant. – Edward Steichen
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
I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really believe in. – Steve McCurry
At 42, I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn’t rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted. – Wynn Bullock
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
Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’. – Ernst Haas
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
Look at lots of exhibitions and books, and don’t get hung up on cameras and technical things. Photography is about images. – Fay Godwin
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
Once the amateur’s naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur. – Alfred Eisenstaedt
To me, it is better to ‘guess’ at how something works, experiment, fail, guess again, fail, and keep repeating that process over and over again until you either figure it out or you discover a multiplicity of other cool tricks along the way. – Trey Ratcliff
What I have learnt and what I teach now is all about experimentation and learning to pick yourself up and try again when you fall down. – Lara Jade
Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera. —Yousuf Karsh
Allow yourself the freedom to step away from perfection because it is only then that you can find success. – Chase Jarvis
Photography and Memory Quotes
Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. – Marc Riboud
All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt. ― Susan Sontag
A photograph is a memory in the raw. – Carrie Latet
In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people. – James Wilson
What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.— Karl Lagerfeld
I think that’s the strength of photography – to decide the decisive moment, to click at the moment to come up with a picture that never comes back again. – Rene Burri
It is a cruel, ironic art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to be evaporated into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down…. ― Kate Morton
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
Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories. – Theodore Levitt
When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not. ― Aleksandar Hemon
Photography is a magical kind of art that allows people to preserve time and moments, and to describe the world the way they see it. ― Sahara Sanders
Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow 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
Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell. ― Kim Edwards
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. – Dorothea Lange
There is one thing the photograph must contain – the humanity of the moment. – Robert Frank
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
A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person’s life that reveal greater truths. – Uknown
A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away. – Eudora Welty
Today everything exists to end in a photograph. ― Susan Sontag
Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. – Paul Strand
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
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
Photography is austere and blazing poetry of the real. – Ansel Adams
This is what I like about photographs they’re proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.– Jodi Picoult
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. – Theodor Seuss Geisel
Nature Photography Quotes
Always take the Scenic Route. ― Anon
I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed. – Annie Leibovitz
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied – it speaks in silence to the very core of your being. –Ansel Adams
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
Images of people, cities, and landscapes from the air tell a unique story about our personal space and how we relate to one another. I’ve always aimed to address the bigger picture and later trends. In many ways, what a photographer does is give others a chance to step back and look at their world and gain perspective on where we stand, and what that means. – Vincent Laforet
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
Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment. ― Ansel Adams
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
It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural which may have a meaning to the spectators. ― Ansel Adams
I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a ‘record shot’. My first thought is always of light. – Galen Rowell
I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn’t changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament. – Edward Burtynsky
A lot of people think that when you have grand scenery, such as you have in Yosemite, that photography must be easy. – Galen Rowell
Parks and gardens are the quintessential intimate landscapes. People use them all the time, leaving their energy and memories behind. It’s what’s left behind that I like to photograph. – Michael Kenna
When the magic hour arrives, my thoughts center on light rather than on the landscape. I search for the perfect light, then hunt for something earthbound to match with it. – Galen Rowell
There will be times when you will be in the field without a camera. And, you will see the most glorious sunset or the most beautiful scene that you have ever witnessed. Don’t be bitter because you can’t record it. Sit down, drink it in, and enjoy it for what it is! – DeGriff
The horizon is the fine line between the golden hour and blue hour. – Destin Sparks
The most interesting parts of the natural world are the edges, places where the ocean meets land, meadow meets forest, timberline touches the heights. – Galen Rowell
Everybody now has a camera, whether it is a professional instrument or just part of a phone. Landscape photography is a pastime enjoyed by more and more. Getting it right is not an issue. It is difficult to make a mistake with the sophisticated technology we now have. Making a personal and creative image is a far greater challenge. – Michael Kenna
The Earth is art, the photographer is only a witness. ― Yann Arthus-Bertrand
I gravitate towards places where humans have been and are no more, to the edge of man’s influence, where the elements are taking over or covering man’s traces. – Michael Kenna
Funny Photography Quotes
I always thought good photos were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn’t that good. – Anon
There are no bad pictures, that’s just how your face looks sometimes. – Abraham Lincoln
I wish I had your job, I would love to just take pictures all day. Me too, [Person who is
totally oversimplifying my job] Me too. – Anon
Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies. – Diane Arbus
You might be a photographer if you won’t even share a cell phone pic until you edit it. – Anon
Are you a camera? Every time I look at you, I smile. Phew! I have all the gear I will ever need. Said no Photographer ever. – Anon
I’ve taken up photography because it’s the only hobby where you can shoot people and cut off their heads without going to jail. – Anon
Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important. Capture the good times, Develop from the negatives and if things don’t work out. Just take another shot. – Anon
Eyes Like a shutter, mind like a lens. – Anon
October is to photographers what April is to accountants. – Anon
A friend of mine wanted to be a photographer but didn’t put enough time into it. He just waited to see what developed. – Anon
The only person happy with a 100% crop is a farmer. – Anon
Photographers are very mean. First, they frame you, then they shoot you, then hang you on the wall. – Anon
Buy a professional camera and you’re a professional photographer, buy a flute and you own a flute. – Anon
Did you hear about the guy who stole all those photos? I think he was framed. – Anon
The fastest way to make money from photography is to sell your camera. – Anon
I can freeze time. What’s your superpower? – Anon
I came. I saw. I captured. – Anon
If it ain’t bokeh -Don’t fix it. – Anon
‘Your camera takes really nice pictures’. Thanks, I taught it everything it knows. – Anon
I had to give up my career as a photographer. I kept losing focus. – Anon
Short Photography Quotes
Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing.
Photographs are just light and time. ― John Green
It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter. – Alfred Eisenstaedt
Just put on the lens and go. – Miroslav Tichy
The beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. – Matt Hardy
The best camera is the one that’s with you. – Chase Jarvis
Available light is any damn light that is available. ― Eugene Smith
Contrast is what makes photography interesting. – Conrad Hall
The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer. – Robert Mapplethorpe
Twelve significant photographs in one year is a good crop. – Ansel Adams
I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these, I have about 800 pictures I like. – Harry Callahan
For me, pointing and clicking my phone is absolutely fine. People say that isn’t the art of photography but I don’t agree. – Annie Lennox
Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.– Edward Weston
Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved. – Bill Brandt
Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location. – Joe McNally
I understood the craft of photography when done by an artist is art. – Ruth Bernhard
Only photograph what you love. – Tim Walker
A picture is worth a thousand words. – Arthur Brisbane
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear. – Alfred Eisenstaedt
One advantage of photography is that it’s visual and can transcend language. – Lisa Kristine
Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself. – Berenice Abbott
I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.– Bill Brandt
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. – Lewis Hine
Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location. – Joe McNally
A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. – Edward Steichen
There are always two people in every picture, the photographer and the viewer. – Ansel Adams
The pictures are there, and you just take them. – Robert Capa
Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. ― Henri Cartier-Bresson
Since I’m inarticulate, I express myself with images.– Helen Levitt
Wherever there is light, one can photograph. – Alfred Stieglitz
A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into. ― Ansel Adams
Photography is the story I fail to put into words. – Destin Sparks
A photo is never objective, If it is, it is really boring. – Anon
Patience is the most important tool. Patience. Patience. Patience. – Lennart Nilsson
I don’t trust words. I trust pictures. – Gilles Peress
Be original or die. – Madame Yevonde
All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. – Richard Avedon
