Art Photography Quotes

• Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.

  Imogen Cunningham

  Inspirational, Photography, Art

  89 Copy quote

• 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

  Photography, Art, Learning

  79 Copy quote

• To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

  Elliott Erwitt

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Photography

  "You Might Be a Cowgirl If . . .: A Guide to Life on the Range" by Jill Charlotte Stanford, Robin L. Corey, Globe Pequot, (p. 111), September 4, 2012.

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  The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

  Dorothea Lange

  Inspirational, Photography, Creativity

  Dorothea Lange, Robert Coles (1982). “Photographs of a Lifetime”

  61 Copy quote

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• Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

  Scott Adams

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Scott Adams (2007). “Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Explains Cloning, Blouse Monsters, Voting Machines, Romance, Monkey G ods, How to Avoid Being Mistaken for a Rodent, and More”, p.438, Penguin

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• Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

  Susan Sontag

  Inspirational, Photography, Today

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.25, Macmillan

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• You don't take a photograph, you make it.

  Ansel Adams

  Inspirational, Photography, Art

  25 Copy quote

• There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.

  Ernst Haas

  Photography, Creativity, Light

  30 Copy quote

• Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Art, Communication

  Ansel Adams (1962). “Basic Photo: Artificial-light photography”

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• I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.

  Harry Callahan

  Photography, Adventure, People

  42 Copy quote
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  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

  Music, Photography, Art

  134 Copy quote

• Maybe because it's entirely an artist's eye, patience and skill that makes an image and not his tools.

  Ken Rockwell

  Photography, Eye, Artist

  3 Copy quote

• A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Taken, Photographer

  8 Copy quote

• There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Photography, Looks, Faces

  38 Copy quote

• Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.

  Diane Arbus

  Inspirational, Photography, Night

  58 Copy quote

• Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

  Duane Michals

  Photography, Insightful, Nikon

  8 Copy quote

• Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.

  Edward Weston

  Photography, Hard Work, Matter

  Edward Weston, Peter C. Bunnell (1983). “Edward Weston on photography”, Gibbs Smith Publishers

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• A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

  Eudora Welty

  Photography, Running, Snapshots

  Eudora Welty (1998). “Stories, Essays, and Memoir”

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• I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

  John Steinbeck

  Photography, Hate, Cameras

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.65, Penguin

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• Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

  Man Ray

  Photography, Inspiration, Technique

  "Photographers on Photography : A Critical Anthology". Book by Nathan Lyons (p. 80), 1966.

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• While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

  Dorothea Lange

  Life, Photography, Eye

  10 Copy quote

• Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Powerful, Communication

  Ansel Adams, Edwin Herbert Land (1974). “Singular images”, Morgan & Morgan, Inc.

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• The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Art, Creativity

  11 Copy quote

• What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

  John Berger

  Inspirational, Photography, Light

  John Berger, Jean Mohr (2016). “Another Way of Telling: A Possible Theory of Photography”, p.75, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.

  Diane Arbus

  Inspirational, Photography, Philosophical

  56 Copy quote