Art Photography Quotes

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

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

Imogen Cunningham

Inspirational, Photography, Art

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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

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To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Inspiring, Photography, Second Chance

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michael L. Sand (1999). “The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers”

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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”

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

Ansel Adams

Inspirational, Photography, Art

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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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What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.

Karl Lagerfeld

Inspirational, Photography, Art

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Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

Ambrose Bierce

Inspirational, Photography, Art

Ambrose Bierce (2009). “The Devil's Dictionary: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.223, ReadHowYouWant.com

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Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

Robert Frank

Photography, Black And White, Color

Sarah Greenough, Robert Frank, Philip Brookman, National Gallery of Art (U.S.) (1994). “Robert Frank”, Natl Gallery of Art

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One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.

Dorothea Lange

Photography, Reality, Cameras

Anne Whiston Spirn, Dorothea Lange (2009). “Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field”, University Of Chicago Press

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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

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

Duane Michals

Photography, Insightful, Nikon

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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

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

Abraham Lincoln

Photography, Looks, Faces

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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

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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

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

Diane Arbus

Inspirational, Photography, Night

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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

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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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