Quotations about Photography

Thank you to Hákon Ágústsson of Photo Quotes for sharing some of these great quotations from his site!


Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. ~Ambrose Bierce


You don't take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it. ~Author Unknown


Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. ~Ansel Adams


No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film. ~Robert Adams, Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques, May 1995


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


When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls! ~Ted Grant


While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ~Dorothea Lange


Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts. ~Minor White


A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into. ~Ansel Adams


There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~Ansel Adams


The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera. ~W. Eugene Smith


Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships. ~Ansel Adams


I think a photography class should be a requirement in all educational programs because it makes you see the world rather than just look at it. ~Author Unknown


A good snapshot stops a moment from running away. ~Eudora Welty


The camera can photograph thought. ~Dirk Bogarde


I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don't find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges. ~William Albert Allard, "The Photographic Essay"


There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. ~Ansel Adams


No photographer is as good as the simplest camera. ~Edward Steichen


Every time someone tells me how sharp my photos are, I assume that it isn't a very interesting photograph. If it were, they would have more to say. ~Author Unknown


Perishability in a photograph is important in a picture. If a photograph looks perishable we say, "Gee, I'm glad I have that moment." ~John Loengard, "Pictures Under Discussion"


When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~Ansel Adams


My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph. ~Richard Avedon


I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. ~John Steinbeck


The departure of our boys to foreign parts with the ever-present possibility that they might never return, taught the real value of photography to every father and mother. To many a mother the photograph of her boy in his country's uniform was the one never-failing consolation. ~Louis Fabian Bachrach


The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer. ~Author Unknown


Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks. ~Henri Cartier-Bresson



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


Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop. ~Usman B. Asif


All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth. ~Richard Avedon


The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth. ~Harold Evans, "Pictures on a Page"


You don't take a photograph, you make it. ~Ansel Adams


Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner. ~Author Unknown


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 great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety. ~Ansel Adams


I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. ~Ruth Bernhard


It pleases me to take amateur photographs of my garden, and it pleases my garden to make my photographs look professional. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


A Ming vase can be well-designed and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone. I don't think this can be true for photography. Unless there is something a little incomplete and a little strange, it will simply look like a copy of something pretty. We won't take an interest in it. ~John Loengard, "Pictures Under Discussion"


I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul. ~Mary Ellen Mark


I'm not a particularly verbose person. I think that's why I like taking pictures... they speak for themselves. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com


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


The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. ~Henri Cartier Bresson


The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box. ~Henri Cartier Bresson


Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. ~Henri Cartier-Bresson


If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine


Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film. ~Author Unknown


Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me. ~Sam Abbel


A picture is worth a thousand words; a slide show is both. ~Author Unknown


One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photo out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photo out of focus are a style. ~Author Unknown


All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it. ~John Berger


I didn't want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature. ~Wynn Bullock


Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. ~Duane Michals


The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance. ~Ansel Adams