Quotes About Good Photography

#1. Everything I do, it's a bit painterly. I like being surrounded by objects, mostly on paper. I like the images. I like the painting. I like good photography. It's something that makes me an emotional connection, and I feel comfortable around it.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

#2. Bad weather makes for good photography.

Ansel Adams

#3. Good photography is not about Zone Printing or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It's just about seeing. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Nothing more.

Elliott Erwitt

#4. You couldn't make a cheap drama. That would be too low-budget. Drama has to have good photography and well-known actors.

Bruce Campbell

#5. Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

#6. I don't care so much anymore about 'good photography'; I am gathering evidence for history.

Gilles Peress

#7. Good photography is unpretentious.

Walker Evans

#8. There is 3 key things for good photography: the camera,lighting and ... Photoshop

Tyra Banks

#9. Good films are not made by accident, nor is good photography. You can have good things happen, on occasion, by accident that can be applied at that moment in a film, but your craft isn't structured around such things, except in beer commercials.

Gordon Willis

#10. I feel shabby - because I've made a name, quite a good name, out of photography. And I still find myself asking the same questions: Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What have I done?

Don McCullin

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.

Don McCullin

#14. Life's the picture. But all good photographers know you gotta have the right lens.

Lamar Giles

#15. Photography was not invented to serve a clearly understood function. There was in fact widespread uncertainty, even among its inventors, as to what it might be good for.

John Szarkowski

#16. I don't see how a woman in documentary photography could have children. I think it's a very difficult thing to do to raise a family, and I have enormous respect for people who do it. I'd hate to do something like that and not be good at it.

Mary Ellen Mark

#17. The hardest part is setting the camera on the tripod, or making the decision to bring the camera out of the car, or just raising the camera to your face, believing, by those actions, that whatever you find before you, whatever you find there, is going to be good.

Sally Mann

#18. A good selfie is when you successfully capture the feeling of that very moment!

Anamika Mishra

#19. Photography is like making cheese. It takes a hell of a lot of milk to make a small amount of cheese just like it takes a hell of a lot of photos to get a good one.

Robert Gillis

#20. No one can really explain in a rational way what makes a good photograph or a bad photograph ... This is why the art world will not throw billions of dollars at photography the way it has at painting; and that is what makes it an exciting medium.

David Wojnarowicz

#21. Photography is like a moment, an instant. You need a half-second to get the photo. So it's good to capture people when they are themselves.

Patrick Demarchelier

#22. Photography works upon the human eye: what is seen is reflected in the brain without the need for complicated thought. In this way the bourgeoisie takes advantage of the mental indolence of the masses and does good business as well.

Willi Munzenberg

#23. Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.

Wallace Stevens

#24. We are all photographers, that's how we remember things; with pictures in our minds. Some of us have good taste and passion to make it an art form and just a few warriors who know the technicalities and marketing make a living out of it.

Ben Tolosa

#25. The key to artistic photography is to work out your own thoughts, by yourselves. Imitation leads to certain disaster. New ideas are always antagonized. Do not mind that. If a thing is good it will survive.

Gertrude Kasebier

#26. A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.

Eudora Welty

#27. I believe that the source of your inspiration is very important. I sometimes see this problem with photographers, even very good ones, who have drawn too much inspiration from photography and who, over time, have a problem forming their own identity.

Peter Lindbergh

#28. A photograph is a click away. A good photograph is a hundred clicks away and a better one, a thousand clicks away

Kowtham Kumar K

#29. What to me is anathema - a corpse-like, outmoded hangover - is for photography to be a bad excuse for another medium ... Is not photography good enough in itself, that it must be made to look like something else, supposedly superior?

Berenice Abbott

#30. The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

#31. Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good

Garry Winogrand

#32. I hate to say I'm a photographer, because I learned photography as I went along. But I also hate to say I'm a painter, a draftsman, even an artist. I think it's good when you're confused about what you are; it means you haven't defined yourself as an artist yet.

Vik Muniz

#33. I am not interested in repetition. I don't want to reach the point from where I wouldn't know how to go further. It's good to set limits for oneself, but there comes a moment when we must destroy what we have constructed.

Josef Koudelka

#34. Murder develops. Yes, like a photograph, isn't it?" "It's very much like photography really," said Dermot. "Quite a good comparison of yours.

Agatha Christie

#35. To make good photographs, to express something, to contribute something to the world he lives in, and to contribute something to the art of photography besides imitations of the best photographers on the market today, that is basic training, the understanding of self.

Edward Steichen

#36. The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good.

Ansel Adams

#37. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough - there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph.

Robert Frank

#38. With photography, I always think that it's not good enough.

Lynsey Addario

#39. If there is a good thing about photography, it is that it can be easily enjoyed.

Antony Armstrong-Jones

#40. It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in studium) that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions.

Roland Barthes

#41. Unpredictability. Accidents. Not good when you're engaging in, say, brain surgery, but when lighting ... wonderful!

Joe McNally

#42. Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?

Duane Michals

#43. It's never as good the second time. Things don't get better. You can't always go back, a lot of it has been erased. The photograph is a record of it having existed.

George A Tice

#44. Photos of yesterday give good evidence of how yesterday was and they are a true prove of history!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#45. A photographer needs to be a good editor of negatives and prints! In fact, most of the prints I make are for my eyes only, and they are no good. I find the single most valuable tool in the darkroom is my trash can - that's where most of my prints end up.

John Sexton

#46. Good pictures. Tragedy and violence certainly make powerful images. It is what we get paid for.But there is a price extracted with every such frame: some of the emotion, the vulnerability, the empathy that makes us human, is lost every time the shutter is released.

Greg Marinovich

#47. A good photograph is like a good hound dog, dumb, but eloquent.

Eugene Atget

#48. I know about photography - I'm really good at it.

Kerry Stokes

#49. A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.

Irving Penn

#50. 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

#51. The craft of photography is the key to good images.

Ansel Adams

#52. Photography as a subject is a good one. Its history is only about 150 years ... You only have to know about twenty-five or thirty names and that's it. All you need. In painting there are more than 1,000.

William Wegman

#53. I think that photography has allowed me to have a voice. I used to stutter, and once I overcame that struggle, it felt good to tell people they were beautiful and special.

Jamel Shabazz

#54. Only the bad artists of the nineteenth century were frightened by the invention of photography; the good ones all welcomed it and used it.

Kenneth Clark

#55. I'm not modest about myself. I know for a fact that I am good. But good in the sense that I can put things together. I expound vociferously to students of architecture and photography, the significance of design. A photograph is a design in which you assemble thoughts in your mind.

Julius Shulman

#56. On many days my primary artistic struggle is, in fact, photography because it is harder to do good work with that. I see myself as an observer of the world who has a strong drive to testify, which I can do because I have the privilege of living in New York with enough food to eat and shelter.

Teju Cole

#57. The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a poet.

Imogen Cunningham

#58. I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad. And especially without any ambition to make a living ... My whole freedom working in photography comes because I say to myself, Let's see what is going on in this world. Let's find out. How do these people look?

Lisette Model

#59. Science strives for answers, but art is happy with a good question.

James Turrell

#60. The main thing is to study pictures and stop listening to the pontifictaions of photographers. Photographers aren't oracles of wisdom. If they're good photographers, then take a good look at their pictures - what else do you need?

Elliott Erwitt

#61. There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

Ansel Adams

#62. If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

Robert Doisneau

#63. It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.

Helmut Newton

#64. 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

#65. The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.

Roland Barthes

#66. I've never taken a script to the stage or to principal photography and said, "This is perfect. This is as good as it can possibly be." It's not Shakespeare, you know; you know it can probably be better.

Harold Ramis

#67. There are two dirty words in photography, one is art, the other is good taste

Helmut Newton

#68. 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

#69. I'm not a social person. Not that I'm not at ease. I'm pretty good, but it bores me. Not the people, but the whole thing. What for? It's not very productive. I only want to do what I have to do: fashion, photography, books. And that's all.

Karl Lagerfeld

#70. By some special graciousness of fate I am deposited - as all good photographers like to be - in the right place at the right time. Go into it as young as possible. Bring all the asset you have and play to win.

Margaret Bourke-White

#71. I was twenty when I discovered war and photography. I can't say that I wanted to bear witness and change the world. I had no good moral reasons: I just loved adventure, I loved the poetry of war, the poetry of chaos, and I found that there was a kind of grace in weaving between the bullets.

Luc Delahaye

#72. It's more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera

Sebastiao Salgado

#73. If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.

Eddie Adams

#74. It's good to be around people who see [photography] as a reasonable enterprise when everyone in the neighborhood may think it's ridiculous. (On the benefit of teaching photography)

John Divola

#75. Being a celebrity you always get really good seats to sporting events but you never get as good seats as the photographers get. And I really love sports. So one of the scams I have going now is I want to learn sports photography so I can get better seats at a sporting event.

Drew Carey

#76. I am not an artist, and I never intended to be one. I hope I have made some good photographs, but what I really hope is that I have done some good photo stories with memorable images that make a point, and, perhaps, even make a difference.

Cornell Capa

#77. 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

#78. It can happen anytime, anywhere. I mean, you don't have to be in front of stuff that's going to make a good photograph. It's possible anywhere.

Henry Wessel Jr.

#79. It's the rejection that is hard. It's not the interviewing that's hard. It's not the photography that's hard. It's, you know, approaching people all day long and having a good portion of those people reject you and some of them be rude.

Brandon Stanton

#80. I am so delighted when I get to see a really good movie. In that experience the artifice of movie making, the photography or the cutting style, falls away because you are inside the movie.

Jay Cassidy

#81. A poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time.

Brassai

#82. I'm always worried about the sitter - are they cold, are they hot, are they comfortable? Photography today is so accurate and so good that it's really so much easier just to take photographs and work from them.

Paul Emsley

#83. I've heard many times that with all good artists it's ultimately a self-portrait even if it's an abstraction. I feel my work is very much who I am. I didn't try to make it that way; it just is. It reflects who I am and also my interests.

Joyce Tenneson

#84. We think of photography as pictures. And it is. But I think of photography as ideas. And do the pictures sustain your ideas or are they just good pictures? I want to have an experience in the world that is a deepening experience, that makes me feel alive and awake and conscious.

Joel Meyerowitz

#85. If I am dissatisfied, it's simply because good photos are few and far between. A good photo is a miracle.

Josef Koudelka

#86. What I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach to photography is the addition of lyricism.[this quality] is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman.

Walker Evans

#87. With a short lens I can reveal the hidden things near at hand, with a long lens the hidden things far away. The telephoto lens provides a new visual sensation for people: it widens their horizons. And, conversely, the things under our nose invariably look good when blown up really big.

Andreas Feininger

#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. But sports photography isn't something you just pick up overnight. You can't do it once a year for fun and expect to do a good job. And I take pride in what I do.

Drew Carey

#90. Adequate photographers use their sight, good photographers use their senses, and great photographers use their souls.

A.J. Compton

#91. 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

#92. There is no such thing as a good paparazzo. A good paparazzo, that's a paparazzo who has had his camera broken. In fact, they are bandits, thieves of photography. (Statement after photographs were published showing Jackie Onassis sunbathing nude.)

Federico Fellini

#93. What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it.

Aubrey Beardsley

#94. Bad decisions create a good lessons, photos however create a good stories.

Solita

#95. In some sense, list-making is to mind-mapping as black and white photography is to color photography. Both are good, both are useful. One gives you precision and clarity; the other gives you a broader spectrum of potential beauty, as well as access to otherwise-unseen features.

Anonymous

#96. Capture the moment. It is your only sacred-memory.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#97. Photography, when used as a representational art, is not a mere copy of nature. This is proved by the rarity of the 'good' photograph.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy