In this article we put together some of our favorite photography quotes from various popular photographers. Photography is more than a skill – it’s about having the right passion to get those perfect shots to tell your story.
We hope these quotes inspire you to keep snapping away, whether you’re an amateur or a professional!
1) “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”
– Andy Warhol
2) “There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”
– Robert Frank
3) ”The eye should learn to listen before it looks.”
– Robert Frank
4) ”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
5) ”A photograph is usually looked at – and seldom looked into.”
– Ansel Adams
6) “Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.”
– Diane Arbus
7) ”Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
8) “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
– Ansel Adams
9) “If you photograph for a long time, you get to understand such things as body language. I often do not look at people I photograph, especially afterwards. Also when I want a photo, I become somewhat fearless, and this helps a lot. There will always be someone who objects to being photographed, and when this happens you move on.”
– Martin Parr
10) “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”
– Jim Richardson
11) “To me, photography must suggest, not insist or explain.”
– Brassai
12) “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
13) “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
– Karl Lagerfeld
14) “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
15) “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
– Robert Capa
16) “A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.”
– Annie Leibovitz
17) ”For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
18) ”A good photograph is knowing where to stand.”
– Ansel Adams
19) “The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.”
– Paul Strand
20) “After following the crowd for a while, I’d then go 180 degrees in the exact opposite direction. It always worked for me.”
– Elliott Erwitt
21) “Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.”
– David Alan Harvey
22) ”The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”
– Susan Sontag
23) ”That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject; you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.”
– Dorothea Lange
24) ”Photographs are just light and time.”
– Aza Holmes
25) ”The way that light hits objects, I think, is one of the more important things that sculpture and photography share.”
– Rashid Johnson
26) “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
27) “What do we feel when we look at a good photograph? We just want to be there, right at the exact moment that photo taken!”
– Mehmet Murat Ildan
28) “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
29) “It’s weird that photographers spend years or even a whole lifetime, trying to capture moments that added together, don’t even amount to a couple of hours.”
– James Lalropui Keivom
30) “The golden rule is work fast. As for framing, composition, focus – this is no time to start asking yourself questions: you just have to trust your intuition and the sharpness of your reflexes.”
– Jacques-Henri Lartigue
31) “The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality.”
– Scott Lorenzo
32) “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
33) “It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart, and head.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
34) “It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.”
– Ansel Adams
35) “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
– Dorothea Lange
36) “Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the photo is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
37) “In my mind, I visualize how a particular… sight will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.”
– Ansel Adams
38) ”Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.”
– Ansel Adams
39) ”One advantage of photography is that it’s visual and can transcend language.”
– Lisa Kristine
40) ”In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people.”
– James Wilson
