Top 100 Photography Picture Quotes
#1. If anyone gets in my way when I'm making a picture, I become irrational. I'm never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do-only that I want that picture.
Margaret Bourke-White
#2. A picture is like a prayer; you're offering a prayer to get something, and in a sense it's like a gift of God because you have practically no control-at least I don't.
Harry Callahan
#3. I think that's the strength of photography - to decide the decisive moment, to click in the moment to come up with a picture that never comes back again.
Rene Burri
#4. The ambition of instantaneous photography ... was that of preserving the spontaneity of action and avoiding any indication that the presence of the picture taker had a modifying influence on what was going on.
Rudolf Arnheim
#5. Life's the picture. But all good photographers know you gotta have the right lens.
Lamar Giles
#6. The very best pictures adapt themselves to many changes in meaning.
John Szarkowski
#7. I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react - click. But first, it's most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
#8. I have no chips on my shoulder. I like to be constructive. As I have said, I have inspired many persons to take up photography. As a matter of fact, I inspire myself. (When I take a good picture I give myself a bonus.).
Weegee
#9. I'm fond of implied narratives, oblique angles, and leaving a little room for the viewer to finish a picture.
Keith Carter
#10. People robbed of their past seem to make the most fervent picture takers, at home and abroad.
Susan Sontag
#11. Nothing is more intriguing than a still photograph in the middle of a motion picture ... Just as an accident is a cry changed into silence and not a silence after a cry, photography is speed rendered motionless ...
Jean Cocteau
#12. Even if not a single picture is never published, they exist. And that means that we are recording the history of the human race. If that's all your doing, it still a very very worth while profession to be involved in.
Philip Jones Griffiths
#13. To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged, to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing-including, when that is the interest, another person's pain or misfortune.
Susan Sontag
#14. When people talk to me about picture hunters, I very quietly laugh. I'm not a hunter of pictures, I'm a fisher of pictures.
Robert Doisneau
#15. As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.
Sam Abell
#16. I feel that whatever picture an artist makes it is in part a picture of himself - a matter of identity.
Emmet Gowin
#17. It is seldom indeed that a composition which was poor when the picture was taken can be improved by reshaping it in the dark room.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
#18. The point of fashion is that you take the picture you want. And fashion is the only photography that allows fantasy, and I'm a fantasist.
Tim Walker
#20. PHOTOGRAPH, n. 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 Bierce
#21. The simplicity of photography lies in the fact that it is very easy to make a picture. The staggering complexity of it lies in the fact that a thousand other pictures of the same subject would have been equally easy.
John Szarkowski
#22. When a person looks at a photograph you've taken, they will always think of themselves, their own life experience. They will relate your photograph to their memories. That interplay is where a picture comes alive and grows into something. They function like invitations.
Jason Fulford
#23. The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects.
Wassily Kandinsky
#24. Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.
Alison Jackson
#25. 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
#26. It's nothing but a matter of seeing, thinking, and interest. That's what makes a good photograph. And then rejecting anything that would be bad for the picture. The wrong light, the wrong background, time and so on. Just don't do it, not matter how beautiful the subject is.
Andreas Feininger
#27. To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn't think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.
Aaron Siskind
#28. Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.
Robert Heinecken
#29. I am pessimistic about a picture's power to be the emissary of just one thing. What I hope is that the picture says, "Here I am, this is what I am like," and the person seeing the picture says in return, 'You know a lot but you don't know half of what I know.'
Emmet Gowin
#30. Every time I talked about making a picture I didn't do it. I had already done it - talking about it! I quit talking.
Harry Callahan
#31. Taking a picture is like giving a piece of your soul away. You allow other people to see the world through your eyes.
Katja Michael
#32. Balance of light is the problem, not the amount. Balance between shadows and highlights determines where the emphasis goes in the picture ... make sure the major light in a picture falls at right angles to the camera.
Elliott Erwitt
#33. The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it.
John Szarkowski
#34. I tell a little bit of my life to them, and they tell a little of theirs to me. The picture itself is just the tip of the iceberg.
Sebastiao Salgado
#35. When we take a picture, we have a negative. We put the right solution on it and, suddenly, the picture comes to life. So what do we do? We take the negative and turn it into a positive.
Madonna Ciccone
#36. My photos are my diary. Every photo is no more than the representation of a single day. And each day contains the past and the projection into the future. That's why I feel compelled to indicate the date on every picture I take.
Nobuyoshi Araki
#37. If it is not an interesting picture when in focus, it is not going to be a better picture out of focus.
Bill Jay
#38. A picture's worth a thousand words. But a single word can make you think of over a thousand pictures in your mind, over a thousand moments, a thousand memories.
Rebecca McNutt
#39. 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
#40. The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.
John Dunning
#41. Flash photography can be horrible. In the hands of an expert who knows how to bounce all that searing bright light in the right direction, it may make an impossible picture workable.
David Hewson
#42. It's not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed.
Sebastiao Salgado
#43. The photograph is the most perfect picture. It does not change; it is absolute, and therefore autonomous, unconditional, devoid of style. Both in its way of informing, and in what it informs of, it is my source.
Gerhard Richter
#44. For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
Diane Arbus
#45. To me if there's an achievement to lighting and photography in a film it's because nothing stands out, it all works as a piece. And you feel that these actors are in this situation and the audience is not thrown by a pretty picture or by bad lighting.
Roger Deakins
#46. We have become a nation of Kodachrome, Nikon, Instamatic addicts. But we haven't yet developed a clear idea of the ethics of picture-taking ... Where do we get the right to bring other people home in a canister? Where did we lose the right to control our image?
Ellen Goodman
#47. Pure photography is a system of picture-making that describes more or less faithfully what might be seen through a rectangular frame from a particular vantage point at a given moment.
John Szarkowski
#48. Pictures could not be accessories to the story
evidence
they had to contain the story within the frame; the best picture contained a whole war within one frame.
Tatjana Soli
#49. Art films aren't necessarily photography. It's feeling. If we can capture a feeling of a people, of a way of life, then we made a good picture.
John Cassavetes
#50. A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
#51. If there is any method in the way I take pictures, I believe it lies in this: See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. The subject will reveal itself.
Bill Brandt
#52. I don't mistrust reality, of which I know next to nothing. I mistrust the picture of reality conveyed to us by our senses, which is imperfect and circumscribed.
Gerhard Richter
#53. I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.
Garry Winogrand
#54. [Photography was necessary to] make my place in the art-world: in order to do this, I had to make a picture, since a picture was what a gallery or museum was meant to hold (all the while, of course, I was claiming that I was denying the standard, rejecting it ... )
Vito Acconci
#55. Poetry at least in my own life, is really about your own mortality. Everything in poetry makes me think of my mortality. It is not a dark thing in life; it prepares you for the graceful things that happen in your life. It gives me a license to make any kind of picture I want with great courage.
Keith Carter
#57. No, you don't shoot things. You capture them. Photography means painting with light. And that's what you do. You paint a picture only by adding light to the things you see.
Katja Michael
#58. Photography starts with the projection of the photographer, his understanding of life and himself into the picture.
Lisette Model
#59. It's seldom you make a great picture. you have to milk the cow quite a lot to get plenty of milk to make a little cheese.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
#63. Everything went together perfectly, and this is what I mean by knowing. I didn't have to analyze anything. I just recognized what was in front of me. All I had to do was set up and take the picture.
Wynn Bullock
#64. I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious.
Harry Callahan
#65. I would say that the emblematic photographic image is a picture from inside a room looking out. I think this defines photography. It's the metaphor for the notion of first sight. What one saw first.
Robert Polidori
#66. When I say that a good picture has surprise quality or shock appeal, I do not mean that it is a loud or vulgar picture but, instead, that it stimulates my thinking and intrigues me.
Alexey Brodovitch
#67. 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
#68. A photograph is a picture and no more true or false than any other depiction; why is that so hard to comprehend?
Bill Jay
#69. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. I say its closer to 675 or 700.
A.E. Samaan
#70. Photoghraphic projects can be as short as an afternoon or as long as a lifetime.
George Barr
#71. It's just seeing - at least the photography I care about. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Anyone can learn how to develop. It's how you organize what you see into a picture.
Elliott Erwitt
#72. Sometimes one waits too long for the perfect moment before snapping the picture. You never realize that you needed was to change perspective.
Miguel Syjuco
#73. A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about.
Richard Avedon
#74. You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era.
David Hockney
#75. If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.
Eddie Adams
#77. There are two parts to the process: taking the picture and finding ways of using it.
Martin Parr
#78. There is always a subjective aspect in landscape art, something in the picture that tells us as much about who is behind the camera as about what is in front of it.
Robert Adams
#79. I think my pictures are really about a kind of tension between my need to make a perfect picture and the impossibility of doing so. Something always fails, there's always a problem, and photography fails in a certain sense ... This is what drives you to the next picture.
Gregory Crewdson
#80. In photography we must learn to seek, not the 'picture,' not the aesthetic of tradition, but the ideal instrument of expression, the self-sufficient vehicle for education.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
#81. Smile for the camera, pretty little Sydney Tar Ponds.
Rebecca McNutt
#82. Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.
Marc Riboud
#83. Later, Jenny would say she seldom knew what she would take a picture of when she picked up a camera, that she only knew once she peered through the viewfinder, as if the photograph had finally found her.
Whitney Otto
#84. There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.
Ruth Bernhard
#85. You can always tell the quality of an author by their cover picture. Bad writers bear an idiotic smile on the inside flap. Great writers take up the entire back cover looking slightly mad, sad, or bored. The very best writers, though, had the superior ability to die before photography was invented.
Bauvard
#86. I'm staying with film, and with silver prints, and no Photoshop. That's the way I learned photography: You make your picture in the camera. Now, so much is made in the computer ... I'm not anti-digital; I just think, for me, film works better.
Mary Ellen Mark
#87. However, I must stress that my own interest is immediate and in the picture. What I am conscious of and what I feel is the picture I am making, the relation of that picture to others I have made and, more generally, its relation to others I have experienced.
Aaron Siskind
#88. [The most important factor in making a good picture is] to know who or what you are photographing. It is not about photography; it should be about life.
Mona Kuhn
#89. 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
#90. To me, the main and most exciting thing about photography is to meet people. The picture is the result of what happened between me and them on the set.
Francesco Carrozzini
#91. The business of making a photograph may be said in simple terms to consist of three elements: the objective world (whose permanent condition is change and disorder), the sheet of paper on which the picture will be realized, and the experience which brings them together.
Aaron Siskind
#92. 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
#94. Never ever say the word shoot when you are taking a picture with a camera because a camera is not a violent weapon.
Ruth Bernhard
#95. A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.
Ivan Klima
#96. As a good picture would come, I would never know exactly what I had done. When you did see it, it would strike you as a great surprise - who did that? How did it happen? Being surprised by your own work makes you both less serious and have serious reverence.
Emmet Gowin
#97. It is the photographer's decision at the two levels of seeing the picture - when it is shot and when it is chosen and printed that determines his personal style.
Alexey Brodovitch
#98. I loved photography but was frustrated by the limitations of cameras. When trying to take a picture of a friend's young, active daughter using my DSLR, it was impossible to capture the fleeting moments.
Ren Ng
#99. 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
#100. Look, if the picture you get instantly is as beautiful as the picture you get by waiting seven days, then it is absolute madness to say that there is virtue in waiting.
Edwin Land
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