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.
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
2- “Photography is a language more universal than words.”
~ Minor White
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
4- “Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories.”
~ Theodore Levitt
5- “The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.”
~ Ansel Adams

Dead Vlei, its name means “dead marsh” – inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia
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
7- “Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.”
~ Ernst Haas
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
9- “You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”
~ Unknown
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

Young Novice Monk in Myanmar
11- “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”
~ Marc Riboud
12- “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”
~ Diane Arbus
13- “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”
~ Ansel Adams
14- “When people ask me what equipment I use ~ I tell them my eyes.”
~ Anonymous
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

Fiery sunset in beautiful Dubrovnik Croatia.
16- “Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.”
~ Percy W. Harris
17- “Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”
~ Yousuf Karsh
18- “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”
~ Andy Warhol
19- “The best camera is the one that’s with you.”
~ Chase Jarvis

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

The 9/11 memorial lights in New York City
22- “Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments.”
~ Alex Tehrani
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
24- “I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.”
~ Diane Arbus
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
26- “A good photographer records; a great photographer reveals.”
~ Skyler Reid

Literally the crack of dawn overlooking the Roman Forum in Rome, Italy
27- “If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, it’s a street photograph.”
~ Bruce Gilden
28- “I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these, I have about 800 pictures I like.”
~ Harry Callahan
29- “Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.”
~ Duane Michals
30- “Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.”
~ Matt Hardy
31- “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
~ Karl Lagerfeld

Vendor going to market in North Vietnam
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
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
34- “Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.”
~ Peter Adams
35- “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”
~ Jim Richardson
36- “I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.”
~ Bill Brandt

Ta Som Temple, Angkor, Cambodia
37- “You just have to live and life will give you pictures.”
~ Henri Cartier Bresson
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
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

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
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
42- “A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.”
~Dorthea Lange
43- “Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
~ Imogen Cunningham
44- “It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.”
~ Alfred Eisenstaedt
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

Golden Macaque in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China
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
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
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
49- “What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.”
~ John Berger
50- “My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.”
~ Steve McCurry

Maligne Lake Boathouse in Jasper National Park in Canada


Great content with awesome pictures and quotes !
Glad you liked the post!
:-)
nice quote with awesome photography dear………………
Glad you liked the post!
Your shot of that Golden Macaque. WOW!
That was a very cool location. The monkey was the best model of the year ;-)
Very inspirational quotes and stunning photos you shared in that post.
Cheers! So happy you enjoyed the article.
I am so glad I found you. A kindred spirit. You found your place in Paris; I found mine in Florence. Hope you understand. I am an American living in Canada, you are a Canadian living in America. What a strange world. Website under contruction.
Glad you found me too. It’s a strange yet beautiful world ;-)
Thanks for sharing! Resonate well with many of the above. Well-chosen quotes!
Cheers, Belinda!
Photography is one of the most exciting hobbies you can pick up, but when you’re first starting out it can all just seem so daunting. But don’t get discouraged! It’s important to remember that everyone started somewhere. There are no Mozarts in photography, virtuoso geniuses who were born knowing everything there is to know about the craft. More often we began like Beethoven, sitting at the piano in tears.
But while learning how to compose a symphony would take years of practice, composing a great photo can be done at the click of a button—if you know what you’re doing. Fret not if you don’t, however, we’ve got some simple tips that are easy to remember, easy to follow, can be used with any camera, and will improve your photos in no time—no technical knowledge required.
thats amazing travel quote.I think you made them your self. Recomanded .thanks
Nice quates,You always shared selfmade quote thanks for it
Beautiful photos & great compilation of quotes.
Glad you like them, Evelyn!
awesome quotes.
Awesome pictures! How I wish I manage to capture shots like you do.
Thanks, Joanne! Anyone can do it. Like with anything, practice is what helps the most. Come on one of my tours and I’ll be happy to teach you :-)
Thanks for sharing this great article. Keep sharing more useful stuff like this. Thank you so much
Capturing a culture in the at this very moment regularly implies shooting the convergence of the present with the past.
This is really good for everyone…Thanks a lot
I am really very happpy to see it……. Thanks a lot
Great. I Like Your Website
Thanks for sharing. I like it….
great post such a nice information thanks for sharing.
Very inspirational quotes and stunning photos you shared in that post.
first, I want to tell you that your website structure is really good……..after that I want to say that those pics are used in this article are best….but you have fewer quotes than other sites.
I like This one…..
What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.
These quotes really inspire me most.
Very Nice Blog Thanks For Sharing Such a Nice Information .
Love this one 👌
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.”
~ Ansel Adams
Thanks for sharing, great photography!