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Last Updated on November 8, 2020 by PixelPluck
A photograph says a thousand words, but what is in the minds of legendary photographers who make those photos. Here is a collection of 100 inspirational Photography quotes from photographers across the globe. Enjoy reading these and draw inspiration from them for your next photography project. A good photography slogan or quote encapsulates an idea or a thought. It clarifies an idea in an inspiring and enlightening way.
A great quote is just the tip of the iceberg. It gives the reader the liberty to imagine the real mass that lies under the surface below.
100 Inspiring Photography 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
- “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
― Karl Lagerfeld - “It’s the first time in the history of the world that creatives are also distributors. And that’s very profound if you think that up until recent history, permission was required for us to be able to share work at any sort of scale. We had to get permission from galleries, ad agencies, or photo editors to be able to have our work out there. And now anybody with access to a computer can show their work in 200 countries around the world.”
― Chase Jarvis - “Always always get a single shot of the bride. Editors love that. Guys are cute but the girls are hot.”
― Jasmine Star - “You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
― Ansel Adams - “Light is beautiful and if you expose for it, it will look awesome.”
― Daniel Aguilar - “There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.”
― Abraham Lincoln - “If your pictures are not good enough you are not close enough.”
― Robert Capa - “A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.”
― Diane Arbus - “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 - “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”
― Marc Riboud - “What matters is making pictures that make people feel and react to them.”
― Fer Juaristi - “A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”
― Eudora Welty - “My aesthetic gets simpler every year as I rely less on gimmicks and more on powerful content.”
― Anna Kuperberg - “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
― Ansel Adams - “What I’m trying to say is find ways to inspire yourself and your clients by taking on challenges and thinking fast in situations that aren’t inspiring, make them inspiring.”
― Jose Villa - “Get out of that frame of mind of trying to make someone else happy.”
― Joe Buissink - “A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.”
― Ansel Adams - “For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson - “Smile a lot. Be a good listener. Don’t be afraid to go after what you want, in the photos and the business. And get a great accountant.”
― Daniel and Lindsay Stark - “People feel good in front of the camera only when you learn to help them feel comfortable being there! It is about infusing them with your passion and educating them about how much they will enjoy the process.”
― David Beckstead - “I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.”
– George Burns - “Wedding photography is one of the hardest damn jobs in photography. Period. End of story.”
― Zack Arias - “Sometimes I arrive just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter.”
― Ansel Adams - “Each year I’m determined to make better photographs than the previous year – I’m constantly trying to be the best.”
― Jeff Ascough - “To photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson - “A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.”
― George Bernard Shaw - “People spot a big black lens, and they worry about what they’re doing, or how their hair looks. Nobody sees the person holding the camera.” ― Erica O’Rourke, Torn
- “The eye should learn to listen before it looks.” ― Robert Frank
- “The most important thing for us is to always be learning, push the boundaries, and to find something new and different with each shoot.” ― Daniel and Lindsay Stark
- “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” ― Henri Cartier-Bresson
- “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” ― Robert Frank
- “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” ― Ansel Adams
- “A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. ” ― Richard Avedon
- “You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.” ― Joan Miró
- “Always seeing something, never seeing nothing, being photographer” ― Walter De Mulder
- “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 - “Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment. ”
― Ansel Adams - “I find humor in many situations and things and I tend to make photographs that point out these things. We photograph according to our character.”
― Huy Nguyen - “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 - “No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It’s the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.”
― Joe McNally - “What’s really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer. ”
― William Albert Allard - “If you force it and you keep looking for moments then you end up shooting what you think the wedding should look like rather than actual moments that are unfolding in front of you.”
― Joe Buissink - “Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise, we’re going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?”
― Duane Michals - “Compare what we use now to what Cartier-Bresson had throughout his career. Or Capa, Winogrand, Brassai, Eve Arnold, etc. We have never had it so good, and yet all we seem to do is moan about sharpness. Why?”
― Jeff Ascough - “I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”
― Diane Arbus - “Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.”
― Joe McNally - “Art is what we call.. the thing an artist does. It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt, and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the.. eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.”
― Seth Godin - “A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.”
― Brigitte Bardot - “I don’t just look at the thing itself or at the reality itself; I look around the edges for that little askew moments-kind of like what makes up our lives-those slightly awkward, lovely moments.”
― Keith Carter - “Don’t look at other wedding photographer’s work. When you walk into a room, find the one thing that you are attracted to and focus on that. Your instincts will guide you to finding an image that you love.”
― Ben Chrisman - “I want pictures like these. The kind that can capture a moment, make it real, make it last. I need pictures that do more than reflect. I need pictures that are true.”
― Lisa Magnum - “It’s really a great asset to be willing to fail and blow it, so to speak, and to be okay with just making stuff, sharing it and getting feedback.”
― Chase Jarvis - “John Loengard, the picture editor at Life, always used to tell me, ”If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.”
― Joe McNally, The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets from One of the World’s Top Shooters - “Patience is the essence of clicking great Photographs!!”
― Abhijeet Sawant - “The most challenging thing about photographing weddings is that all that is beautiful is true and all that is true is beautiful. As in the movie ‘Il Gattopardo’ by Luchino Visconti where truth corresponds to beauty.”
― Carlo Carletti - “Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.”
― Duane Michals - “I have shots for her. Now, these shots are for me.”
― Jasmine Star - “You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles.”
― Joe McNally - “For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.”
― Diane Arbus - “It is a profound honor as a photographer to witness two people falling in love.”
― Jesh de Rox - “Keep it organic and timeless and your images will withstand the test of time, stop overdoing photoshoots, and applying the coolest action to your digital images. All of that stuff is trendy and it will die off in no time, keep it simple and classy.”
― Jose Villa - “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 - (On getting the laugh on the picture)”Keeping the camera on the face while talking. Of course, you look stupid but my job is not to look cool. My job is to make them look cool.”
― Jasmine Star - “If I can dig deeper and show more of who people are, aside from it being a wedding day, then I feel I’ve succeeded. Usually, at the end of the night, that comes out. The party’s over, and they one hundred percent become themselves.”
― Tyler Wirken - “I know what looks good. I don’t think you have an ugly side. I think you have a fear.”
― Jasmine Star - “Allow yourself to be surprised by your mistakes.”
― Fer Juaristi - “When photographs are emotionally honest, it can feel scary for the photographer. It’s easier to hide behind a facade of prettiness that makes everything flat and formulaic. But it’s the deeply moving photos that have the most meaning for the client. You need honesty and openness to be able to shoot like that. You need to notice and see people as they are and not as you expect them to be.”
― Anna Kuperberg - “I do believe that the experience my couples have, is just as important if not more as the images in the end. What I add, quietly observe, and how I lead during an event is very important that it’s exactly what the couple anticipates and expects. This is an endless skill to be perfected.”
― Mike Larson - “I shoot what I want to be shooting. For instance, I never shoot an engagement session where I’m not inspired. I suggest locations to my clients and I have them come to me, then I take them to areas I know have amazing light and backdrops. it’s my playground and I do best here.”
― Jose Villa - “Wedding photography is so challenging and complex. Nothing is the same ever, so if you really want to do it right, you really have to study and focus and perform at your highest level. It is almost impossible to shoot a wedding perfectly — technically speaking, but if you decide you want to try you’ll realize you have to perform at the top of your game. You’re thinking about light, moment, and the composition of every single frame. You’re reminding yourself to think outside the box; to shoot different; to shoot outside your comfort zone. You’re trying to be creative with detailed shots and also have a strong and solid knowledge of portraiture. Trying to do all that in an 8-12 hour period can really show you how very difficult it is to execute great photography more specifically wedding photography.”
― Daniel Aguilar - “How many frames do we need to remember someone or someplace? Most people only really need one, so I divide the day into sections: getting ready, the ceremony, etc, and I try to create one image which inspires me for every section, which just defines that moment.”
― Fer Juaristi - “We all see the world so different, why not just transfer that onto film, or digital and share your vision with the world, not someone else’s vision… if you do you will always see your images as someone else’s not yours. That feeling is not genuine.”
― Jose Villa - “The main thing is just to remember that hard work got me here and only hard work will keep me here.”
― Brandon Stanton (Humans of New York) - “Album spread. Album spread. Always think about the end result.”
― Jasmine Star - “Just be prepared to look back in a few years on yourself, and your photos, and laugh.”
― Ben Chrisman - “The best photographers are super nice people and that it’s not a coincidence. Great photographers genuinely like people, and people can feel that. That’s what makes people feel comfortable. It is important to appear confident with clients, but it is more important to not be afraid to act like a fool, have fun, laugh, and shake your hips to get people comfortable.”
― Sergio - “When there are other limitations, I don’t let myself be a limitation.”
― Fer Juaristi - “I really want to show a bride a side of herself that she may have never seen before; elegant and sexy, and at the same time I want to tell the story of her wedding day and show her how much love she’s surrounded with. I want to show how important it is to have family around you on your wedding day. Want to show images that reflect the unconditional love family and friends can have for you. I want to share my own vision of what it is to be loved and how I would like that love to be remembered.”
― Daniel Aguilar - “When I meet with clients, I ask them to close their eyes and imagine how their wedding photographs are going to look,” he explains. “Then I say, I’m not going to give you that and I’ll show them a slide show featuring some very different images.”
― Fer Juaristi - “My experience says that if you put out a lot of personal work that’s good, it tends to attract high dollar commercial work. But to be clear – I don’t create art to get high dollar projects, I do high dollar projects so I can create more art.”
― Chase Jarvis - “If you don’t put yourself in the way of luck, it won’t hit you. I take a lot of chances, and most of the time I fail, but every once in a while luck hits you.”
― Joe Buissink - “Shooting journalistically is the hardest style of wedding photography. Many people think it is just a case of pointing and shooting. It isn’t. It takes years of experience and an eye for a picture.”
― Jeff Ascough - (On client’s request) “Shoot it and get it done. Move on.”
― Jasmine Star - “The camera adds a certain sheen to things. Something about being frozen in time really makes things sparkle.”
― Brandon Stanton - “Pinterest is like visiting art galleries and helps me think of fresh and innovative ways of approaching portraits. Instagram has helped me fall back in love with snapshots and motivated me to shoot more every day.”
― Brett Butterstein - “When we wake up the morning after their wedding and can barely walk. When we’re so mentally and physically exhausted, we know there is absolutely nothing more we could have done to work harder to capture their day.”
― Erika and Lanny Mann - “We were taught early on that the most important elements to a good photo are lighting, composition, and emotion. All three make for a fantastic image. But we have learned that emotion trumps all.”
― Daniel and Lindsay Stark - “Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
― Elliot Erwitt - “The most important thing about photography is who you are, and I can go into depth about the psychology of that, but there’s no way you can take a photograph and not leave your imprint on it. Every time you hit the shutter it’s based on who you are, that’s what makes you different from everybody else. My style is that I shoot from the heart to the heart.”
― Joe Buissink - “I feel the need to make sure that the new generation of photographers realizes that what we (some of us old-timers) endeavor to do in this industry is to continue to show the world that what we do is a craft, an art form. There is no magic bullet for success. It requires dedication and hard work. And if you wish to truly excel at this craft.. it requires introspection. A very deep look inside yourself.”
― Joe Buissink - “I always use my last week’s effort as my greatest inspiration. Instead of comparing myself to what photographers around me are doing, I’m always trying to beat last week’s effort.”
― Jerry Ghionis - “At the center of every wedding, we have a girl. Who fell in love with a boy. Or a girl who fell in love with a girl. Or a boy who fell in l… you get my point. The rest is fluff.”
― Jonas Peterson - “What we are doing is providing a space for couples to see how beautiful they really are.”
― Jesh de Rox - “I always look for three things when it comes to my images. Good lighting, good composition, and good storytelling. To my mind, a good image will contain two of these elements, and the outstanding image will contain all three.”
― Jeff Ascough - “Photography is like sxx. You know the ending. So how can you make it interesting?”
― Fer Juaristi - ” I believe that every time I press the shutter, I create for myself.”
― David Beckstead - “I don’t like couples to look at me because it feels like a threesome.”
― Fer Juaristi - “Being in Instagram is making me be a better photographer and a better person and I had been told that if you wanna be a better photographer you have to be a better person”
― Susana Barbera - “Practice the art of focusing on what’s awesome to you.”
― Fer Juaristi.
What are your favorite quotes from photographers? Let us know in comments, what is your favorite photography quote or slogan.
Also, Read Best Photography Slogans and One-Liners for your Photography Business.
More sources for Photography Quotes:
Goodreads Photography Quotes Collection
