50 Awesome Inspirational Photography Quotes

As many of you who read my blog will notice, I love using quotes to make a point. The funny thing is that I rarely quote photographers. After noticing that, I thought it was time to remedy this and share 50 of my all time favorite photography quotes.

Hope you enjoy them!

Leave your favorite photography related quotes in the comments. I’d love to read them.        

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50 Awesome Inspirational Photography Quotes

1- “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

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2- “Photography is a language more universal than words.”

~ Minor White

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3- “Photography is for me, a spontaneous impulse that comes from an ever-attentive eye, which captures the moment and its eternity.”

~ Henri Cartier Bresson

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4- “Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories.”

~ Theodore Levitt

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5- “The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.”

~ Ansel Adams

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6- “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

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7- “Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.”

~ Ernst Haas

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8- “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

~ Cecil Beaton

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9- “You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”

~ Unknown

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10- “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

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11- “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”

~ Marc Riboud

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12- “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

~ Diane Arbus

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13- “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”

~ Ansel Adams

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14- “When people ask me what equipment I use ~ I tell them my eyes.”

~ Anonymous

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15- “When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I’d like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.”

~ Annie Leibovitz

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16- “Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.”

~ Percy W. Harris

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17- “Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”

~ Yousuf Karsh

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18- “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”

~ Andy Warhol

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19- “The best camera is the one that’s with you.”

~ Chase Jarvis

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20- “Buying a camera doesn’t make you a photographer. It makes you a camera owner.”

~ Author Unknown

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21- “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

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22- “Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments.”

~ Alex Tehrani

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23- “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

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24- “I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.”

~ Diane Arbus

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25- “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

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26- “A good photographer records; a great photographer reveals.”

~ Skyler Reid

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27- “If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, it’s a street photograph.”

~ Bruce Gilden

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28- “I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these, I have about 800 pictures I like.”

~ Harry Callahan

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29- “Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.”

~ Duane Michals

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30- “Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.”

~ Matt Hardy

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31- “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”

~ Karl Lagerfeld

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32- “The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.”

~ Annie Leibovitz

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33- “Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives and if things don’t work out, just take another shot.”

~ Unknown

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34- “Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.”

~ Peter Adams

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35- “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”

~ Jim Richardson

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36- “I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.”

~ Bill Brandt

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37- “You just have to live and life will give you pictures.”

~ Henri Cartier Bresson

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38- “It doesn’t matter if you’re photographing a porter in a market in Marrakech or you’re photographing the king of Morroco. You have the same sympathetic approach to everybody. You be nice to everybody, basically.”

~ Albert Watson

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39- “When you photograph people in color you photograph their clothes. When you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their soul!”

~ Ted Grant

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40- “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

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41- “Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.”

~ Arnold Newman

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42- “A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.”

~Dorthea Lange

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43- “Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”

~ Imogen Cunningham

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44- “It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.”

~ Alfred Eisenstaedt

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45- “The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.”

~ Edward Weston

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46- “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

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47- “Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment…and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human race and even very likely for its survival.”

~ Eliot Porter

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48- “The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.”

~Edward Steichen

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49- “What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.”

~ John Berger

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50- “My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.”

~ Steve McCurry

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