They say that to become the best, you should learn from the best. As photographers, we usually believe that the best way to learn from our peers is to spend countless hours studying their work - whether it is in books and art galleries or on their photography website.
But as many words as an image can convey, sometimes you need an actual quote to learn what exactly inspired them to capture those outstanding pictures. These photography quotes will offer you a glimpse into the mind of some of the most brilliant artists in the field, and inspire you to follow in their steps.
Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson -
The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print the performance.
A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.
In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.
If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.
There is one thing the photograph must contain – the humanity of the moment.
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
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.
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.
Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.
The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.
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.
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
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.
What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.
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.
Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.
All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.
I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs.
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.
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 -
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.
Photography helps people to see.
When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!
If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.
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!
Only photograph what you love.
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.
Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.
Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it.
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.
You just have to live and life will give you pictures.
- Henri Cartier Bresson -
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments.
Photography is a language more universal than words.
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.
Photography can light up darkness and expose ignorance.
What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.
Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.
We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.
I love photographing. It’s that simple.
The pictures are there, and you just take them.
The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.
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.
Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.
When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things.
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.
We don’t learn from our good images; we learn from the ones that can be improved on.
Photography is not about cameras, gadgets and gizmos. Photography is about photographers. A camera didn’t make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel.
The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.
You cannot possibly hit the shutter without leaving a piece of you in the image.
Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.
You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper.
- William Albert Allard -
Photography has nothing to do with cameras.
Fear is the thing that prohibits a lot of photographers from reaching their full potential.
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.
Photography is like a moment, an instant. You need a half-second to get the photo. So it’s good to capture people when they are themselves.
For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson -
Photography is a love affair with life.
Photography is the beauty of life captured.
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.
I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph.
The camera has always been a guide, and it's allowed me to see things and focus on things that maybe an average person wouldn't even notice.
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.
Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph.
There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.
One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and on. It’s on all the time.
Photography is an itch that won't go away. No matter how much you scratch it.
Whosoever possesses a camera should never know boredom.
Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
When I make a photograph I feel that I hold a piece of the universe in my hands.
Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.
A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.
I take the same picture twice, First with my heart then camera.
The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.
Taking a picture is like giving a piece of your soul away. You allow other people to see the world through your eyes.
A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.
The earth is art, the photographer is only a witness.
My pictures are about making people realize we've got to protect those who can't speak for themselves.
- Michael "Nick" Nichols -
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
A landscape image cuts across all political and national boundaries; it transcends the constraints of language and culture.
To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson -
The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years,regardless of the number of times they are viewed.
To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.
All the planning, intuition, technical prowess, and knowledge, as well as the trust and rapport you have (or haven’t) established, will show up in the picture, frozen forever.
Without vision, the photographer perishes.
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.
Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell.
A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.
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.