Top 100 Quotes For Photography Pictures
#1. I don't want anyone to appreciate the light or the palette of tones. I want my pictures to inform, to provoke discussion - and to raise money.
Sebastiao Salgado
#2. I really don't have any idea about photography, but I take pictures.
Alex Majoli
#3. I love this life. I feel like I am always catching my breath and saying, 'Oh! Will you look at that?' Photography has been my way of bearing witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary life. You don't look for pictures. Your pictures are looking for you.
Harold Feinstein
#6. He took twelve pictures that day.
Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. "This one has the magic," he said.
When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.
Patti Smith
#7. In the absence of a subject with which you are passionately involved, and without the excitement that drives you to grasp it and exhaust it, you may take some beautiful pictures, but not a photographic oeuvre.
Brassai
#8. 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
#9. I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I've lost.
Nan Goldin
#10. I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.
James Nachtwey
#11. Contrary to the general belief about photography, you don't need bright sunlight: the best moodiest pictures are taken in the dim light of almost dusk, or of rainy days ...
Jack Kerouac
#12. 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
#13. There's no great mystique to photography. A lot of photographers like to put their hands up to their forehead and tell you how they've suffered and so forth. Well, I just rent a car and drive to the place and take the pictures.
Elliott Erwitt
#14. 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
#15. Sometimes in news photography and so on, the pictures are a little bit dry, and put on the page and just set in a journalistic way in front of you.
Chris Hondros
#16. Do not settle for easy. Do not settle for that first image. Craft it, work it, and make something more out of it. And finally, don't forget that the biggest joy in photography is making pictures of those things in your own life.
David Burnett
#17. Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.
Marc Riboud
#18. If I have caught myself struggling to remember, it was, if not a pretense, at least premature, in that I only ever used photography for my own pleasure - even if I then bewailed the vanished pleasure which my pictures brought back to me.
Jeanloup Sieff
#19. People have responded to the pictures I make as mystical things, and they somehow carry the illusion further thinking that the place is this mystical, magical place. The desert is also a very barren place, a very lonely place, a very boring, uneventful place.
Richard Misrach
#20. Pictures put you in front of a reality that most of the times you don't want to see, don't want to know about, don't want to get involved.
Oliviero Toscani
#21. It is every photographer's responsibility to discover new images and a new personal way of looking at things. If he can do this his pictures will command attention and have surprise quality.
Alexey Brodovitch
#22. But now the train had finally begun to move, and Albie had switched the fearless truth-telling eye of his camera lens from his untied laces to the walls of the tunnels under east London, because you can never have enough pictures of dirty concrete.
David Nicholls
#23. Yes, photography saved my life. Every time I go through something scary, traumatic, I survive by taking pictures.
Nan Goldin
#24. My first pictures are from 1972, and my first proper camera dates back to 1973. During the first year I used my father's camera. It had a flash on it, which I don't like, but I didn't know anything about photography back then, so it was just what I did.
Anton Corbijn
#25. For half a century photography has been the "art form" of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? to the finger on the button? to the law of averages?
Gore Vidal
#26. I made a decision that to me, photography had to be something that I could feel. I could feel in my stomach. I could not take pictures that were not connected to my own inner life.
Jacob Aue Sobol
#27. I want to take some quite incredible photographs that have never been taken before ... pictures which are simple and complex at the same time, which will amaze and overwhelm people ... I must achieve this so that photography can begin to be considered a form of art.
Alexander Rodchenko
#28. When the novice photographer starts taking pictures, he carries his camera about and shoots everything that interests him. There comes a time when he must crystallize his ideas and set off in an particular direction. He must learn that shooting for the sake of shooting is dull and unprofitable.
Alexey Brodovitch
#29. I really enjoy the iPad because you can multi-task: I can watch a movie, read, look at pictures that I shot - because I'm into photography. It serves a lot of purposes for me.
Tyson Chandler
#30. Photography is something you learn to love very quickly. I know that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken and I will take them all.
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
#31. 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
#32. ! discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings. For the first time, I looked through a lens - and photography immediately started to invade my life.
Sebastiao Salgado
#33. Pictures, regardless of how they are created and recreated, are intended to be looked at. This brings to the forefront not the technology of imaging, which of course is important, but rather what we might call the eyenology (seeing).
Henri Cartier-Bresson
#34. I am not unaware that I have the mindset, as contradictory as it may sound, to discover in the world what I am in fact looking for. Perhaps the best pictures are a seamless hybrid of discovery and construction.
Richard Misrach
#35. 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
#36. The very best pictures adapt themselves to many changes in meaning.
John Szarkowski
#37. I'm more interested in a photography that is 'unfinished' - a photography that is suggestive and can trigger a conversation or dialogue. There are pictures that are closed, finished, to which there is no way in.
Paolo Pellegrin
#38. I never claim my photographs reveal some definitive truth. I claim that this is what I saw and felt about the subject at the time the pictures were made. That's all that any photographer can claim. I do not know any great photographer who would presume otherwise.
David Hurn
#39. I have been photographing the portrait of an end of an era, as machines and computers replace human workers. What we have in these pictures is an archeology.
Sebastiao Salgado
#40. If you look at most photography, especially the pictures that grab you, they are not objective at all. Sometimes gut wrenching and sometimes lovely, but the moment someone decides to release the shutter, it is an editorial statement.
John Filo
#41. Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
Diane Arbus
#42. 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
#43. The only other white people we saw during the three days we stayed there were a German couple intent on taking pictures of their stuffed sheep in a variety of locations around the world.
Tynan
#44. I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.
Sebastiao Salgado
#45. I don't know who said 'pictures don't lie.' It couldn't have been a photographer.
Linda Palmer
#46. 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
#47. I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.
Harry Callahan
#48. 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 truth.
Lisa Mangum
#50. The work I care about is terribly simple. I observe. I try to entertain. But above all I want my pictures to be emotional. Little else interests me in photography.
Elliott Erwitt
#51. When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do not know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does. Each photograph that works is a revelation to its supposed creator.
Robert Adams
#52. Digital photography and Photoshop have made it very easy for people to take pictures. It's a medium that allows a lot of mediocre stuff to get through.
Edward Burtynsky
#53. She believed photography to be the greatest of all art forms because it was simultaneously junk food and gourmet cuisine, because you could snap dozens of pictures in a couple of hours, then spend dozens of hours perfecting just a couple of them.
Tommy Wallach
#54. There is not a big difference between life and taking pictures ... You're in the middle of life, you're living, making love, eating, sleeping - and photography is part of it. And I don't say this because I'm being romantic. I say this because that's just the way it happens to be.
Anders Petersen
#55. Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity; be intensely yourself. Don't try to be outstanding; don't try to be a success;don't try to do pictures for others to look at- just please yourself.
Ralph Steiner
#56. Art is nothing more than creating an emotion in your own form.
Shannon L. Alder
#57. I think probably something big can be done with cameras, I'm not saying, er, I'm saying chemical photography's finished, that means you can't have a Cartier Bresson again, you need never believe pictures.
David Hockney
#58. A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.
Annie Leibovitz
#59. That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.
Dorothea Lange
#60. I was always in front of the camera. My mom was really passionate about photography - I have pictures of my whole life. I've always just been in front of my mom's camera, and it's always comfortable to me.
Gigi Hadid
#61. 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
#62. 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
#64. Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.
Elliott Erwitt
#65. 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
#66. If you take pictures does that make you an art thief?
Bill Jay
#67. I felt that photography ought to start with and remain faithful to the appearance of the world, and in so doing record contradictions. The greatest pictures would then ... find wholeness in the torn world.
Robert Adams
#68. Pictures you have taken have an influence on those that you are going to make. That's life!
John Sexton
#69. Very few people, thank God, look like the pictures of them which are published in the papers and the weekly magazines ...
Ilka Chase
#70. Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other peoples pictures too - photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny, but that carry with them a reminder of community.
Robert Adams
#71. When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.
Aleksandar Hemon
#72. Photoghraphic projects can be as short as an afternoon or as long as a lifetime.
George Barr
#73. Photography is there to construct the idea of us as a great family and we go on vacations and take these pictures and then we look at them later and we say, 'Isn't this a great family?' So photography is instrumental in creating family not only as a memento, a souvenir, but also a kind of mythology.
Larry Sultan
#74. One of my passions is photography. I always carry a camera in my bag whenever I travel. I always take pictures wherever I go, and some of them end up being really crazy ones.
Sunidhi Chauhan
#75. He's got a box with a demon in it that draws pictures," said Rincewind shortly. "Do what the madman says and he will give you gold.
Terry Pratchett
#76. Sometimes the simplest pictures are the hardest to get.
Neil Leifer
#77. There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.
Abraham Lincoln
#78. I was drawn to street photography because there are pictures everywhere there: a woman holding a dog, a baby screaming to be put in a pram, kids playing punch ball, stores with huge barrels of kosher pickles outside. I wanted to photograph life, and here it was.
Harold Feinstein
#79. Light field photography unleashes the power of the light, to forever change how everyone takes and experiences pictures.
Ren Ng
#80. There are two kinds of photographers: those who compose pictures and those who take them. The former work in studios. For the latter, the studio is the world ... For them, the ordinary doesn't exist: every thing in life is a source of nourishment.
Ernst Haas
#81. I see no difference between my pictures that people consider amusing and the rest. To me, it's all serious work - they're just a reaction to what I see. I don't leave this apartment in the morning and say to myself 'Today I'm going to be funny and tomorrow I'm going to be sad.'
Elliott Erwitt
#82. I love photography. Photographers and photos. I took a ton of pictures in Paris, and I find that I'm most inspired by following other photographers on Instagram.
Abigail Spencer
#83. I don't like captions. I prefer people to look at my pictures and invent their own stories.
Josef Koudelka
#84. The way men are seen in photography, in fashion, and the way that men look at pictures of themselves has changed in recent years. It is a subject that has come into focus: The masculine image, a man's personal style, changing attitudes to the male face and body,
Mario Testino
#85. You can't teach people photography, they've got to learn how to do it the best way possible for them. They can learn from looking at pictures taken by well-known people, but they don't really get intimate with the medium until they've made a few bad shots!
Cecil Beaton
#86. No, I don't work here, I'm taking pictures of messy bathrooms for a photo essay on the American West. But I'm always up for clean, so if you want to pitch in, I've got Pine Sol and a sponge in my car ... It's that VW microbus parked next to the dumpster, and you don't need a key, just pull hard.
Pansy Schneider-Horst
#87. Photography is a very forgiving medium. Anybody that can afford film and a camera can make pictures.
Todd Walker
#88. To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures.
Harry Callahan
#89. I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.
Harold Feinstein
#90. The possibility of one particular photographer's pictures lying around the corner is never realized until the photographer is there. It's one of the enigmas of photography.
Alex Webb
#91. My taking pictures means I'm taking a series of pictures which become an essay and then get extended into a book. That's what's exciting, to take an idea and work it through to completion.
George A Tice
#92. I don't speak emotionally about my pictures. That's for other people to do. I will say that I love my photographs. That's what keeps me going.
George A Tice
#93. A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said 'I love your pictures - they're wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.' He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: 'That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.
Sam Haskins
#94. I don't go out looking for pictures. I go out, and if something catches my eye, that's reason enough to photograph it.
Henry Wessel Jr.
#95. Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible
John Szarkowski
#97. We make pictures. At the end of the day, we create something potentially significant that did not exist at the beginning of the day. We go forward, despite the uncertainty. Because this is an act of love and passion, which defies reason and prudence.
Joe McNally
#98. Actually, it's nature itself that creates the most beautiful pictures, I'm only choosing the perspective.
Katja Michael
#99. By making pictures, you learn the many different properties of photography. I use those properties differently than, say, an advertising agency would, but we're both operating in the same reality. A face painted by Picasso occupies the same reality as a portrait by Stieglitz.
Sigmar Polke
#100. When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College ... my pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months after the exhibit, I dropped out of college, left my wife and began to write this book.
Vladislav Tamarov
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