Top 63 Photography Quotes

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Photography is a great way to capture a single moment in time. With that in mind, check out the top 63 photography quotes.

#63 – 60. Photography Quotes

63. 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

62. You don’t take a photograph, you make it. – Ansel Adams

61. In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. — Alfred Stieglitz

60. In my mind, I visualize how a particular… sight 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

#59 – 50. Photography Quotes

59. When [you] acquire an understanding of the science behind light and what governs it, then [you] can predict its behavior and control the lighting in [your] photographs. – Roberto Valenzuela

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

57. It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter. – Alfred Eisenstaedt

56. Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

55. Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. – Paul Strand

54. I go and get the camera and do it. Photography is a medium in which if you don’t do it then, very often you don’t do it at all, because it doesn’t happen twice. – Paul Strand

53. Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies. – Diane Arbus

52. 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

51. The photo that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality. – Scott Lorenzo

50. There are always two people in every photo: the photographer and the viewer. – Ansel Adams

#49 – 40. Photography Quotes

49. Photography is the story I fail to put into words. – Destin Sparks

48. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. – Dorothea Lange

47. 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

46. Photography helps people to see. – Berenice Abbott

45. The people who hire me as a wedding photographer hire me not just because of my photographic style, they hire me because of the style of my personality. My style and personality match, so they know they’re getting a genuine style. – Jared Platt

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

43. When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear. – Alfred Eisenstaedt

42. The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print the performance. – Ansel Adams

41. In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people. – James Wilson

40. We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us. — Ralph Hattersley

#39 – 30. Photography Quotes

39. When I photograph I make love. – Alfred Stieglitz

38. If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough. – Robert Capa

37. It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are. – Paul Caponigro

36. Photography is the art of making memories tangible. – Destin Sparks

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

34. The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. – Susan Sontag

33. There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes. – Abraham Lincoln

32. With creating, we are literally bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before. – Montana Dennis

31. Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. – Dorothea Lange

30. To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. — Elliott Erwitt

#29 – 20. Photography Quotes

29. My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea. – Edward Weston

28. The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do. — Andy Warhol

27. A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. – Diane Arbus

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

25. I don’t trust words. I trust pictures. – Gilles Peress

24. To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

23. There is one thing the photo must contain – the humanity of the moment. – Robert Frank

22. It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators. – Ansel Adams

21. Wherever the center of the light source is, you want that to be a little bit above the center of the couple’s eyes – something magical happens when you do this.  – Zach and Jody Gray

20. Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. – Marc Riboud

#19 – 10. Photography Quotes

19. Photographers stop photographing subjects too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.  – Dorothea Lange

18. A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. – Edward Steichen

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

16. I believe photographers should shoot what they want, not shoot what they get.  – Roberto Valenzuela

15. When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls! – Ted Grant

14. Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real. – Ansel Adams

13. 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

12. If you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a moment. – Linda McCartney

11. 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

10. It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart, and head. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

#9 – 1. Photography Quotes

9. What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. – Karl Lagerfeld

8. A good snapshot keeps a moment that s gone from running away. – Eudora Welty

7. How do we start taking pictures of people, and stop taking pictures of poses? – Justin and Mary Marantz

6. A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people. – Annie Leibovitz

5. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. — Robert Frank

4. Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field. – Peter Adams

3. You need to use [a hat] when you have to, such as when it’s raining. Or, when you just feel like it. Sometimes you wear it because you need to get the sun out of your eyes. Think about flash in the same way. Don’t use it all the time, but also don’t shy away from it. If it’s dark outside, use flash. If you know there’s time, and you have a good idea, and your clients will love it, then go for it. – Matt Kennedy

2. 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

1. Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. – Jean-Luc Godard

Ideas for the top 63 photography quotes come from the following sources.^[1]ShotKit – 96 MOST INSPIRATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTE IN 2021^[2]PetaPixel – 70 Inspirational Quotes for Photographers^[3]shootdotedit – 165 OF THE BEST PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTE FROM TOP PHOTOGRAPHERS