Top 97 Not A Photographer Quotes
#1. I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.
Keanu Reeves
#2. I'm not a photographer, so I need all the help I can get when it comes to make a picture look cool.
Hunter Hayes
#3. I am an expressionist and by that I mean that I'm not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.
Duane Michals
#4. The fundamental issue is one of emphasis: you are not a photographer because you are interested in photography ... The reason is that photography is only a tool, a vehicle, for expressing or transmitting a passion in something else. It is not the end result.
David Hurn
#5. You are not a photographer because you are interested in photography.
David Hurn
#7. I've always had a healthy disregard for authority - it allows me to do my job as a portrait photographer and not as someone who is playing the power game.
Platon
#8. Well, I'm not going to get into that. I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like "street photographer" are so stupid. I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it.
Garry Winogrand
#9. My photographs are not pure: they are a seething wealth of imperfection.
Frederick Sommer
#10. A photographer is defined as much by what he or she decides not to photograph as by what is photographed.
Jack Dykinga
#11. There are a lot of cameramen but not so many photographers. And a lot of cameramen attack from a technical approach without much imagination. They look, but they don't see.
Gordon Willis
#12. Strike all the adjectives from your bio. If you take photos, you're not an 'aspiring' photographer, you're not an 'amazing' photographer either. You're a photographer. Don't get cute. Don't brag. Just state the facts.
Austin Kleon
#13. There are photographic fanatics, just as there are religious fanatics. They buy a so-called candid camera there is no such thing: it's the photographer who has to be candid, not the camera.
Weegee
#14. What matters is not what you photograph, but why and how you photograph it. Even the most controversial subject, if depicted by a sensitive photographer with honesty, sympathy, and understanding, can be transformed into an emotionally rewarding experience.
Andreas Feininger
#15. Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
Walker Evans
#16. Thirty-six satisfactory exposures on a roll means a photographer is not trying anything new
Freeman Patterson
#17. We are living in a moment where we have broken the equilibrium of the planet. We are not paying attention to our intuitive side. We only pay attention to our reason. We have become an urban animal
Sebastiao Salgado
#18. I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
Dorothea Lange
#19. You know, my dad wasn't a photographer or filmmaker by profession, but on Sundays, he would take pictures of me and my family or his pals horseback riding, and it was a means of communication and affection, a means of not being so dysfunctional with each other.
Bruce Weber
#20. We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers.
Charlotte Cotton
#21. The problem is I'm not a good photographer. To be perfectly honest, I'm too shy. Not aggressive enough. Well, I'm not aggressive at all. I just loved to see wonderfully dressed women, and I still do. That's all there is to it.
Bill Cunningham
#22. I'm a photographer and my pictures are used in advertising campaigns. But I don't do advertising. Do you hear me? I take pictures. I'm not an advertising agency. I'm not an advertising man.
Oliviero Toscani
#23. I like it when one is not certain what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.
Saul Leiter
#24. I wonder what art is about and I'm not sure that what I do is art because I'm a photographer, not an artist. But whatever you do, the secret is to do what you think you ought to do, and do the hell out of it.
Todd Walker
#25. I found it very helpful not to do the venture round. Instead, I started with very little money, a few thousand dollars, and I did every job myself. I was the first photographer. I was the first customer service rep. I was the first online marketing person.
Jon Oringer
#26. I'm not a serious photographer like many of my contemporaries. That is to say, I am serious about not being serious.
Elliott Erwitt
#27. I'm a terrible photographer.I'm not being modest. My photos really are crap. But in a way, the more the photo is crap, the better to paint from.
Chantal Joffe
#28. I try not to tell students where to shoot, when to shoot, or what to shoot. I feel finding the picture is the most important part of being a photographer. The actual shooting is of lesser importance.
Jay Maisel
#29. In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working; he makes photographs, working with subject matter that he thinks will make the pictures.
John Szarkowski
#30. I always found it rather pathetic that as a photographer I would be dependent to such a large extent on sheer luck ... So the moment I was offered [digital] tools to bend the shape of the image into my choices, and not those of lady luck, I was hooked.
Pedro Meyer
#31. I hate it when people say, I'm an artist. I think, well, I'll be the judge of that. And I don't think artist is a job description. It's a critique, a favorable critique, that someone else might apply to your work. I guess in the art world I'm not exactly a photographer, but I do use photography.
John Waters
#32. For a short time I was an assistant to a professional photographer, and I felt that my soul was not there. That is the stage when I decided to stay in London and do a graduate degree.
Ori Gersht
#33. Today, the smartphone in your pocket has a high-quality digital camera. Everyone - not just artists - is a photographer, and the explosion of photos taken annually proves it.
Peter Diamandis
#34. I'm not a good photographer, not a good writer. I'm a pretty regular person whose insecurity is so pervasive that it makes me always feel vulnerable.
Sally Mann
#35. I suppose the primary intention of a documentary photographer is to document facts. My work often does this but it is not the primary intention. My intention is to make the best pictorial image I can.
Richard Billingham
#36. The photographer's intentions do not determine the meaning of a photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it.
Susan Sontag
#37. Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.
Bill Brandt
#38. Andre Breton once said that a portrait should not only be an image but an oracle one questions, and that the photographer's aim should be a profound likeness, which physically and morally predicts the subject's entire future.
Bill Brandt
#39. A photographer without imagination is not a good photographer.
Graciela Iturbide
#40. Color really doesn't have interaction if it's full of colors. It's the interaction or relationship among or between colors that makes a color image. This usually happens with a few colors, not a glut of them.
Jay Maisel
#41. Look, Matisse I ain't. You know how they have on the invitations, a reception for the artist will be held at ... And I say, Look, you gotta change this. I'm not an artist. I'm a photographer, a skilled craftsman.
Phil Stern
#42. One is not really a photographer until preoccupation with learning has been outgrown and the camera in his hands is an extension of himself. This is where creativity begins.
Carl Mydans
#43. I'm not a politician or a scholar or political historian. I'm just a photographer who's trying to capture a spirit. It's not an intellectual process; it's an intuitive process.
Platon
#44. Photography's a case of keeping all the pores of the skin open, as well as the eyes. A lot of photographers today think that by putting on the uniform, the fishing vest, and all the Nikons, that that makes them a photographer. But it doesn't. It's not just seeing. It's feeling.
Don McCullin
#45. If you're not a curious person, you're certainly not going to be a good photographer.
Elliott Erwitt
#46. I think that a visual artist's philosophy develops much more freely than a writer's or a thinker's philosophy. It is not so disciplined. The photographer works with both his eyes and his mind.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
#47. I don't have a favorite photo. As a photographer, I have attachments to each image. Not the one photo: the experience of getting the photos is the challenge or the thing.
Michael Muller
#48. I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been.
Dorothea Lange
#49. The most important thing you learn as a sports photographer is anticipation - not where the action is taking place, but where it's going to take place. Not where the subject is now, but where they're going to be.
Lawrence Schiller
#50. A good photographer can make you look incredible, even when you're not feeling very sexy.
Cindy Margolis
#52. In a way, it's like the photographer always has his vision of me. The pictures that I'm known for are not really my image, they're always the photographer's vision of me. I can look a hundred different ways, but what people see of me in pictures is not really my image.
Kate Moss
#53. To me photography can be simultaneously both a record and a mirror or window of self-expression the camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye and yet, the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.
Eikoh Hosoe
#54. The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.
Michelangelo Antonioni
#55. The process must be concealed from - non-existent for - the photographer, who by definition need think of the art in the taking and not in the making photographs ... In short, all that should be necessary to get a good picture is to take a good picture.
Edwin Land
#56. It's disgusting. Why would people idolize someone who doesn't do anything and saying you're a model/photographer with a digital camera and photoshop does not count as an artist.
Ryan Ross
#57. Edward counseled that a photograph of consequence could be made from just about anything. Subject matter, in itself, was not critical. The understanding of the photographer was.
Mary Street Alinder
#58. I'm not a nice girl; I'm a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods )
Berenice Abbott
#59. I am a hobbyist photographer so I relate to the visual arts that way, but I'm not a painter.
Annie Parisse
#60. I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.
Imogen Cunningham
#61. In England, I'm already labeled a rock photographer, which is a little insulting, because I'm not a rock photographer at all.
Anton Corbijn
#62. I did some artistic nudes when I was I 8 with a French-Canadian photographer while I was modeling. They were beautiful shots, and they were not about nudity.
Lexa Doig
#63. "Do not call yourself an "artist-photographer" and make "artist-painters" and "artist-sculptors" laugh; call yourself a photographer and wait for artists to call you brother."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#64. I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run, he's fuzzy, get out of here.
Mitch Hedberg
#65. Aesthetics does not exist for the camera as an isolated entity. Aesthetics, in fact, is inseparable from the purpose of the photographer and the use he makes of his theme. When photography fails ... it is usually because a false separation has been imposed on form and content.
Sid Grossman
#66. You have to focus on what you are doing, not just as a photographer, but as a human being.
Anders Petersen
#67. If it is practiced by a man of taste, the photograph will have the appearance of art (but) the photographer must ... intervene as little as possible, so as not to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses.
Henri Matisse
#68. A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.
Man Ray
#69. For a photographer, it's a necessity that you can shoot stuff magically. Accidents are necessary, but after I take the photograph, it's not over. I work on it more.
Rinko Kawauchi
#70. If the photographer is not a discoverer, then he is not an artist.
Paul Strand
#71. The aim and end of the artist is not truth exactly, much less fact; it is effect ... There is no doubt he [the photographer] best gets his effect by way of truth, but he uses it as he would a servant, not a master.
Henry Peach Robinson
#72. Many claim I am a photographer of tragedy. In the greater sense I am not, for though I often photograph where the tragic emotion is present, the result is almost invariably affirmative.
W. Eugene Smith
#73. While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically; hence the story of Indian life will not be told in microscopic detail, but rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture.
Edward S. Curtis
#74. I read like a crazy person, I play the piano, and I'm a photographer. I always say my photography keeps me sane. I spend a lot of time in the darkroom. It's a very solitary, quiet life when I'm not working.
Alaina Huffman
#75. 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
#76. We are extremely precise about the girls we like; they're not necessarily the "It" girls of the season. Sometimes this "It" girl business gets a bit hysterical. It's all about which girl did which shoot with which photographer.
Christophe Lemaitre
#77. I go back and forth, but I never wanted to be the photographer of the gay and lesbian community. I will wave a rainbow flag proudly, but I am not a singular identity. I think a singular identity isn't very interesting, and I'm a little bit more multifaceted as a person than that.
Catherine Opie
#78. This idea fascinates me. The idea that a few seconds of watching a photographer in action can tell you his/her status in the medium. And it's true. If you watch a photographer of merit working an event he/she does not look like an amateur ...
David Hurn
#79. There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that's the real person. But I'm interested in whatever is going on. And I'm not that comfortable myself.
Annie Leibovitz
#80. If the photographer isn't going to pay attention to the picture he is making, that if he thinks the camera is just a machine and not an avenue of expression, then he has no business asking anyone for anything, let alone their time and interest. Don't show the world, he said, invent the world.
Whitney Otto
#81. I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
#82. You are either born to be a photographer or not. The art of photography is not something you can learn in the classroom or by watching someone do it.
Nobuyoshi Araki
#83. She grabbed her clutch bag and circled her arms around his neck. "Caulder McCutchen, I'm really not sure what you are."
He lifted his head and looked down at her, squinted. "I'm a man. Enough said?"
Velia smiled and looped her arm through his. "Yes, sir. Shall we go?
Mary J. McCoy-Dressel
#84. I didn't want to pretend to be a conceptual artist that charges $10,000 for an experience. It's just not what I am. I'm a photographer and I make prints. And people buy a print, and I understand that. But I'm uncomfortable with buying an experience.
Alec Soth
#85. This is how you can tell a real photographer: mostly, a real photographer does not say 'I wish I had my camera on me right now'. Instead a real photographer pulls out her camera and takes the photograph.
Neil Gaiman
#86. I'm not very daring in my street style, usually because there's a photographer around!
Anne Hathaway
#87. The photographer is a thief who chooses what he steals (which, at this stage of the crisis, is a luxury) and does not democratize the image, that is to say, the photographer selects the pictures, a privilege which ought to be granted to the person being photographed.
Subcomandante Marcos
#88. As a photographer who is constantly in violent, bloody situations where the instinct is to turn away, I am always trying to figure out how to make people not turn away.
Lynsey Addario
#89. But I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work.
Bill Brandt
#90. There's this way that photography is always about going out searching. I'm not the kind of a photographer who can photograph my home.
Justine Kurland
#92. I can use the camera to make a place or landscape; the camera to a greater extent projects rather than takes in or reproduces. The camera, or, rather, the eye, produces the impression of the place: I as a photographer am not passively taking in; I am active as a subject generating the object.
Olafur Eliasson
#93. As a photographer, I'm interested in how dramatically photography has changed. Most images are not real or are composites, and most of us don't even know it anymore.
David Allee
#94. My youngest son becomes an award-winning nature photographer, and I cannot resist writing poems to his pictures. My daughter loves to cook, though I do not. Yet together, we write a cookbook with fairy tales. And now a second.
Jane Yolen
#95. I'm not a war photographer. I've always dealt with the consequences of conflict.
Giles Duley
#96. It's not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It's their intimate relationship with it.
Antoine D'Agata
#97. [To a photographer who said, 'Look this way, love':] I am not your 'love.' I am Your Royal Highness!
Anne, Princess Royal
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
