Photography Quotes

I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph. Berenice Abbott Quotes What the human eye observes causally and incuriously, the eye of the camera notes with relentless fidelity. Berenice Abbott Quotes Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past. Berenice Abbott Quotes Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself. Berenice Abbott Quotes Photography helps people to see. Berenice Abbott Quotes In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular . . . sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice. Ansel Adams Quotes "I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term-meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching-there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster." Ansel Adams Quotes Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. Ansel Adams Quotes When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. Ansel Adams Quotes I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do -- that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. Diane Arbus Quotes A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. Diane Arbus Quotes "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." David Bailey Quotes The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget. John Berger Quotes 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 Quotes The most refined skills of color printing, the intricate techniques of wide-angle photography, provide us pictures of trivia bigger and more real than life. We forget that we see trivia and notice only that the reproduction is so good. Man fulfils his dream and by photographic magic produces a precise image of the Grand Canyon. The result is not that he adores nature or beauty the more. Instead he adores his camera—and himself. Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes Blessed be the inventor of photography! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has "cast up" in my time -- this art by which even the "poor" can possess themselves of tolerable of their absent dear ones. Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes "To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event." Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes 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 Quotes 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 Quotes 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 Quotes In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv. Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes [note: "Leitmotiv is German for 'leading motif'. It is a short musical phrase of specific sound effect that signals the appearance of a person, action, or situation."] Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes The camera has an interest in turning history into spectacle, but none in reversing the process. At best, the picture leaves a vague blur in the observer's mind; strong enough to send him into battle perhaps, but not to have him understand why he is going. Denis Donoghue Quotes A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind. Albert Einstein Quotes Photograph is a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite so good as that of a Cheyenne. Ambrose Pierce Quotes 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 Quotes The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding. Edward Steichen Quotes "I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything." John Steinbeck Quotes “The scene fascinated me: A round hat; the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right; the white drawbridge, its railing made of chain; white suspenders crossed on the back of a man below; circular iron machinery; a mast that cut into the sky, completing a triangle. I stood spellbound. I saw shapes related to one another--a picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me: simple people; the feeling of ship, ocean, sky; a sense of release that I was away from the mob called rich. Rembrandt came into my mind and I wondered would he have felt as I did . . . I had only one plate holder with one unexposed plate. could I catch what I saw and felt? I released the shutter. If I had captured what I wanted, the photograph would go far beyond any of my previous prints. It would be a picture based on related shapes and deepest human feeling--a step in my own evolution, a spontaneous discovery.” Alfred Stieglitz Quotes For half a century, photography has been the "art form" of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages? Gore Vidal Quotes "No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen." Minor White Quotes 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 Quotes A very receptive state of mind... not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it. Minor White Quotes Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. Ambrose Bierce Quotes You don't take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it. Author Unknown Quotes No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film. Robert Adams Quotes 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 Quotes When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls! Ted Grant Quotes 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 Quotes A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into. Ansel Adams Quotes There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. Ansel Adams Quotes The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera. W. Eugene Smith Quotes Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships. Ansel Adams Quotes 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 Quotes A good snapshot stops a moment from running away. Eudora Welty Quotes The camera can photograph thought. Dirk Bogarde Quotes 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 Photogra Quotes There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. Ansel Adams Quotes No photographer is as good as the simplest camera. Edward Steichen Quotes 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 Quotes 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 Discu Quotes My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph. Richard Avedon Quotes I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. John Steinbeck Quotes 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 Quotes The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer. Author Unknown Quotes A photograph is memory in the raw. Carrie Latet Quotes 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 Quotes Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop. Usman B. Asif Quotes All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth. Richard Avedon Quotes The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth. Harold Evans, "Pictures on a Page Quotes You don't take a photograph, you make it. Ansel Adams Quotes Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner. Author Unknown Quotes 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 Quotes 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 Quotes I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. Ruth Bernhard Quotes 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 Discu Quotes 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 Quotes The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. Henri Cartier Bresson Quotes 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 Quotes If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. Lewis Hine Quotes A photograph is like the recipe - a memory the finished dish. Carrie Latet Quotes Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film. Author Unknown Quotes Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me. Sam Abbel Quotes A picture is worth a thousand words; a slide show is both. Author Unknown Quotes 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 Quotes 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 Quotes Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. Duane Michals Quotes 'To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, 'There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.' Ansel Adams Quotes I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term -- meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching -- there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster. Ansel Adams Quotes Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'. Ernst Haas Quotes The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE. Ernst Haas Quotes We try to grab pieces of our lives as they speed past us. Photographs freeze those pieces and help us remember how we were. We don't know these lost people but if you look around, you'll find someone just like them. Gene McSweeney Quotes 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 Quotes Maybe because it's entirely an artist's eye, patience and skill that makes an image and not his tools. Ken Rockwell Quotes No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want. Ken Rockwell Quotes The camera's only job is to get out of the way of making photographs. Ken Rockwell Quotes Your equipment DOES NOT affect the quality of your image. The less time and effort you spend worrying about your equipment the more time and effort you can spend creating great images. The right equipment just makes it easier, faster or more convenient for you to get the results you need. Ken Rockwell Quotes No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen. Minor White Quotes Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual. Nickolas Muray Quotes Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. Oscar Wilde Quotes They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum. Tallulah Bankhead Quotes I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn. Pablo Picasso Quotes To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things. Ansel Adams Quotes Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art. Ansel Adams Quotes Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs. Ansel Adams Quotes A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. Ansel Adams Quotes A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. Ansel Adams Quotes A good photograph is knowing where to stand. Ansel Adams Quotes Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand. Margaret Bourke-White Quotes