Photography Quotes

No, I don't work here, I'm taking pictures of messy bathrooms for a photo essay on the American West. But I'm always up for clean, so if you want to pitch in, I've got Pine Sol and a sponge in my car... It's that VW microbus parked next to the dumpster, and you don't need a key, just pull hard.

~ Pansy Schneider-Horst

I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds—the one inside us and the one outside us.

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

To take photographs is to hold one's breath when all faculties converge in the face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis.

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to give a meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of the mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary.

~ Matthew Knisely

Collect moments rather than things. Moments get away.

~ Matthew Knisely

There is a terrible truthfulness about photography. The ordinary academician gets hold of a pretty model, paints her as well as he can, calls her Juliet, and puts a nice verse Shakespeare underneath, and the picture is admired beyond measure. The photographer finds the same pretty girl, he dresses her up and photographs her, and calls her Juliet, but somehow it is no good – it is still Miss Wilkins, the model. It is too true to be Juliet.George Bernard ShawWilson’s Photographic Magazine, LVI, 1909

~ John Szarkowski

(...) photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. (...) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence — once they became an option — they mutated . . . into a form of expression. And Art for its own sake, God help us, was born.

~ Chip Kidd

You put your camera around your neck in the morning along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange ('Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life' by Milton Meltzer)

~ Milton Meltzer

Let’s not only take great photos, but let’s make great photos with our lives.

~ Matthew Knisely

Stories are one of the greatest gifts we can give to our children. Stories are equipment for life.

~ Matthew Knisely

If we continually let go of the moments, we let go of who we are and we lose ourselves.

~ Matthew Knisely

The greatest moments in life are the ones right in front of you.

~ Matthew Knisely

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

~ Matthew Knisely

Be in love with the moments of your life.

~ Matthew Knisely

The greatest moments are right in front of you.

~ Matthew Knisely

When you press the shutter, time won't see which camera, it will still get freezed in a moment... and thats the best Farewell for that moment.

~ Sagar Gosavi

Look― shoot all you want. With a camera you can barely capture a soul at a time. With planned obsolescence, you can terminate everyone's future at once and they'll never know what hit them.

~ Pansy Schneider-Horst

Actually, no. I won't ever go digital. I work with thirty-five or large format. I like the hand-jobs, you know. And I still do most of my own printing. I've developed such a profound distaste for touch-up and modern artifice—comes from snapping too many derelicts and detritus, perhaps, but I love it. Photo bloody Shop can go stuff it. A picture should be honest, even if the subject is contrived on the ground, you know; not dolled-up for advertising punch or sex appeal.

~ Pansy Schneider-Horst

You see, i f you have t rue photographic vision, you have clar i ty and i f you haveclarity, you don't need to explain or defend your images.Clar i ty is about what emot ions or feel ings the image is t rying to evoke, not the fact sbehind the image.Photographic clar i ty is about passion of purpose. I t 's about a single-minded desi reto protect a memory. I t 's about story tel l ing wi th a camera that 's so power ful , nowords are necessary.

~ Scott Bourne

There are too many images, too many cameras now. We’re all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It’s just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art anymore. Maybe it never was

~ Robert Frank

Don' t focus on NEW - focus on authent ic. Being or iginal isn' t being new - i t 's beingyou.

~ Scott Bourne

To sum up - i f you want to be more creat ive, star t loving yoursel f enough to giveyoursel f permission to fai l . In fact , bet ter yet , don' t even wor ry about winning orlosing. Just DO.

~ Scott Bourne

The time of the photograph is [always] after. This imprecision accommodates the numerous successions, the end upon seismic end, in a time without time, un[re]countable: still. In this, it is a perfect crime, “l’anéantissement anéanti, la fin… privée d’elle-même.

~ Nathanaël

Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop.

~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

No matter how sophisticated the camera, the photographer is still the one that makes it.

~ Doug Bartlow

God creates the beauty. My camera and I are a witness.

~ Mark Denman

Art is unpredictable.

~ Joe Papagoda

Looking into the mirror I ask myself:You live in a house equipped with air conditioning.You eat tasty food.You utilize convenient transportation to travel.You utilize convenient information technology to live.Could you not say that you, who do all this, are not a dictator?Isn't it right that you life is supported by somebody else's death?Doesn't your life that exists at the expense of somebody else's sacrifice infinitely resemble the life of a dictator who only cares about his own life?-Yasumasa Morimura (excerpt from Mr. Morimura's Dictator Speech).

~ Marinella Venanzi

PHOTOGRAPHY is the best way, where you can SAVE your sweet PAST.

~ Aman Verma

I also have to add that if Rembrandt had been given a camera then that guys understanding of light and form would have blown the rest of us shooters into a black hole of despair.

~ Steve Merrick

God creates the beauty. Through my camera, I am a witness.

~ Mark Denman

My pictures are about making people realize we've got to protect those who can't speak for themselves.

~ Michael Nick Nichols

Stirton's work, he says, is now all about investigation. 'You literally are trying to find out what's happening and, finally, manoeuvre yourself to the point where you can take a picture, and then you're presented with a 20-minute window where it's: Okay, now get your picture!' His voice is charged with emotion. 'Fucking angst and worry and, you know, FEAR of failure – every aspect of that comes into those 20 minutes, so it's a very intense experience. So when I make those pictures, I'm worried; I’m nervous.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

What's required of me in the field is to feel,' Stirton says with emphasis. 'And trying to take that feeling and put it in a form that communicates a particular set of emotions or circumstances - whether that involves depicting masculine pride, or a particular kind of suffering, or love, or closeness - my primary job is to feel and to try to put that feeling into some kind of visual form. My goal is to get to the heart of each story, you know? I’m trying to evolve in my work.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Two kinds of people , they spend a lot of time to take a perfect shot of God's creation from the same distance , the first ones take it with their guns and the second ones take it from their Cameras .. I am blessed that I am from the second ones.. ❤️

~ Fida Rasool

It's amazing how photography can capture just a split second of something exquisite.

~ Kiera Cass

First rule to be a photographer, you have to be invisible.

~ Sameh Talhamy

The photographer is now charging real beasts, beleaguered and too rare to kill. Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature - tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.

~ Susan Sontag

The camera basically is a license to explore.

~ Jerry N. Uelsmann