117 of the Best Photography Quotes from Top Photographers
Do images truly express as much as words do – or even more? Why do some pictures evoke strong emotions within us or strike a chord deep within? You may or may not have answers to such questions. But what you have here is a well-curated list of words of wisdom or witty one-liners from photographers who have wowed us with their stellar images. This is a collection of famous photography quotes on their observations about their art, passion, and profession.
We are a photo editing company that provides editing services for professional wedding photographers, and that means we work with a lot of amazing pro wedding photographers. And we’ve been following wedding photographers, portrait photographers, boudoir photographers, lifestyle photographers, and influencers very closely for years, collecting words of advice we can pass on to inspire, educate, and motivate the entire community of photographers we collaborate with. While some of these quotes might reiterate how inspiring the art of photography could be for both the photographer and the viewer, others might take you back to a moment you had probably experienced as a photographer. And yes, coming back to what we began with, you could always take your pick of caption from this compilation of quotes for a well-curated social media feed. From inspirational to funny, we have one for every mood!
FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
From what photography means to them to what makes for a good photo, these famous quotes from top photographers delve into a plethora of topics, and reading these pearls of prudence from these notable photography leaders could be truly rewarding. Because at times just a single line could beautifully convey the crux of what photography is. So, here you go!
- “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
– Ansel Adams - “A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.”
– Annie Leibovitz - “Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.”
– Peter Adams - “I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.”
– Gilles Peress - “It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.”
– Alfred Eisenstaedt - “Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.”
– Diane Arbus - “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
– Robert Capa - “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”
– Marc Riboud - “Your first 1,000 photographs are your worst.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson - “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”
– Andy Warhol - “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
– Dorothea Lange - “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”
– Ansel Adams - “Photography helps people to see.”
– Berenice Abbott - “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
– Karl Lagerfeld - “When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.”
– Alfred Eisenstaedt
PRO WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER QUOTES
There are quotes – and then there are slice-of-life quotes. Here we bring you a bunch of photography quotes that you may relate to, especially the ones that discuss real-life scenarios or situations that you may have faced on the job as a photographer. Whether it is a tough lighting scenario or having a hard time getting a subject to pose correctly, in all likelihood these professional photographers have been there and seen it all. Some of these quotes could be ideal for photographers who are just starting out or even those who have learned along the way what they could have done differently in their first years. Listed below is a compilation of all such scenarios.
- “How do we start taking pictures of people, and stop taking pictures of poses?”
– Justin and Mary Marantz - “Circumstantial light considers not only all the properties and behaviors of natural light, but also how that light interacts with the objects around , so that it can transform those objects into light-shaping tools.” He has more to say! Click here for his Ask Anything Q&A.
– Roberto Valenzuela - “The people who hire me as a wedding photographer hire me not just because of my photographic style, they hire me because of the style of my personality. My style and personality match, so they know they’re getting a genuine style.”
– Jared Platt - “You need to use when you have to, such as when it’s raining. Or, when you just feel like it. Sometimes you wear it because you need to get the sun out of your eyes. Think about flash in the same way. Don’t use it all the time, but also don’t shy away from it. If it’s dark outside, use flash. If you know there’s time, and you have a good idea, and your clients will love it, then go for it.”
– Matt Kennedy - “When you acquire an understanding of the science behind light and what governs it, then you can predict its behavior and control the lighting in photographs.”
– Roberto Valenzuela - “With creating, we are literally bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before.”
– Montana Dennis - “I believe photographers should shoot what they want, not shoot what they get.”
– Roberto Valenzuela - “Wherever the center of the light source is, you want that to be a little bit above the center of the couple’s eyes – something magical happens when you do this.”
– Zach and Jody Gray
FUNNY PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
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Your job as a wedding photographer puts you in all kinds of situations – at times funny and amusing, at other times a tight spot. And many of you might look for humor even in stressful situations for some quick comic relief. Because a hearty laugh could be a great stressbuster! So, here are some of the best quotes that could put a smile on your face.
- “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
- “Gosh, my job is so easy! I just click a button all day… said no photographer ever.” Are you struggling with time management? Do you have too many things on your plate demanding your attention? Give outsourcing a try!
- “You might be a photographer if… Your eyesight from staring at the computer has gone from F11 to F1.8.”
– Naman Pokarna’s Photography - “Today, I am going to shoot someone… and they will love me for it!”
– Unknown
Related Read: 14 Relatable Photography Humor Quotes For Wedding Pros
BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
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Black and white images are often held as classic expressions of timeless moments, and these evergreen photography quotes celebrate the eternal appeal of black and white photos.
- “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 - “There’s something strange and powerful about black and white imagery.”
– Stefan Kanfer - “Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.”
– Jack Lowden - “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!”
– Ted Grant
Suggested Read: How To Make An Image Black And White In Lightroom
NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
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There are many quotes about photography that celebrate the true essence of nature’s bounty. And you could always draw inspiration from them while creating the photograph of your imagination. Imagine the blue skies, the lush greenery, and the natural light of the sun adding their charm to your images. This is especially true when it comes to outdoor wedding photography sessions or shoots. Take a look at these quotes that drew inspiration from nature.
- “I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.”
– Annie Leibovitz - “The earth is art, the photographer is only a witness.”
– Yann Arthus-Bertrand - “Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.”
– Ambrose Bierce - “Wherever there is light, one can photograph.”
– Alfred Stieglitz
INSPIRATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
There are several inspirational quotes by remarkable photographers that could motivate you to excel in your craft. Below, we share some of those quotes about photography with you.
- “Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.”
– Bill Brandt - “The pictures are there, and you just take them.”
– Robert Capa - “The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?”
– Edward Weston - “The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.”
– Annie Leibovitz - “Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.”
– Martin Parr - “A photograph is like a recipe – memory the finished dish.”
– Carrie Latet - “In photography, there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.”
– August Sander - “The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”
– William Thackeray - “The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed.”
– Anne Geddes - “For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate.”
– Giles Duley - “You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”
– Joan Miro - “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 - “Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.”
– Joe McNally
Image Courtesy: ShootDotEdit Customer: @wild.trail.studio - “All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
– Richard Avedon - “When people ask me what equipment I use – I tell them my eyes.”
– Anonymous - “I’ve always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception.”
– James Balog - “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”
– Diane Arbus - “Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.”
– Jacques-Henri Lartigue - “I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs.”
– Wayne Miller - “To me, the magic of photography, per se, is that you can capture an instant of a second that couldn’t exist before and couldn’t exist after. It’s almost like a cowboy that draws his gun. You draw a second before or after, you miss and you’re dead – not them. To me, photography’s always like that.”
– Mario Testin - “Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.”
– Garry Winogrand - “Results are uncertain even among the more experienced photographers.”
– Matthew Brady - “In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people.”
– James Wilson - “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.”
– Lewis Hine
MORE INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES
- “Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.”
– Sally Mann - “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”
– Susan Sontag - “Once photography enters your bloodstream, it is like a disease.”
– Anonymous - “A camera is a SAVE button for the mind’s eye.”
– Roger Kingston - “Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.”
– Ben Shahn - “Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories.”
– Theodore Levitt - “When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things.”
– Wynn Bullock - “We don’t learn from our good images; we learn from the ones that can be improved on.”
– Jen Rozenbaum - “If you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a moment.”
– Linda McCartney - “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
– Ansel Adams - “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 - “I didn’t choose photography, photography chose me.”
– Gerardo Suter - “Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
– Imogen Cunningham - “There’s a time when people say your work is revolutionary, but you have to keep being revolutionary. I can’t keep shooting pop stars all my life. You have to keep changing, keep pushing yourself, looking for the new, the unusual.”
– Rankin - “Photography is not about cameras, gadgets and gizmos. Photography is about photographers. A camera didn’t make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel.”
– Peter Adams - “The more you photograph, the more you realize what can and what can’t be photographed. You just have to keep doing it.”
– Eliot Porter
Image Courtesy: ShootDotEdit Customer: @jorgesantiagophoto - “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 - “My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even have in my mind, but to explore the potential of moments I can only begin to imagine.”
– Lois Greenfield - “The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.”
– Orson Welles - “Contrast is what makes photography interesting.”
– Conrad Hall - “It’s about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.”
– Elliott Erwitt - “Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.”
– Paul Strand - “Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.”
– Andy Goldsworthy - “We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.”
– Ralph Hattersley - “The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.”
– Robert Mapplethorpe - “There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”
– Robert Frank - “I began to realize that the camera sees the world differently than the human eye and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed.”
– Galen Rowell - “Photography is the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision.”
– Sebastian Smee - “I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really believe in.”
– Steve McCurry - “I think of photography like therapy.”
– Harry Gruyaert
THOUGHT-PROVOKING PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
There are images that could draw your attention, make you pause for a while, and compel you to contemplate what the pictures are trying to convey. These quotes pay a tribute to such images.
- “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 - “Photography has nothing to do with cameras.”
– Lucas Gentry - “Essentially what photography is is life lit up.”
– Sam Abell - “Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.” Do you find yourself struggling to make wedding photography work? Learn when and how to grow your wedding photography business here.
– Martin Parr - “You cannot possibly hit the shutter without leaving a piece of you in the image.”
– Joe Buissink - “Photography is my passion. Whenever I get time, I click.”
– Shaheer Sheikh - “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
– Dorothea Lange - “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 - “Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.”
– Percy W. Harris - “One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and on. It’s on all the time.”
– Annie Leibovitz - “Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself.”
– Peter Lindbergh - “When you photograph a face… you photograph the soul behind it.”
– Jean-Luc Godard - “Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” Are you struggling with lighting? Refer to our guide on photography lighting basics for any location.
– George Eastman - “In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
– Alfred Stieglitz - “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 - “A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”
– Eudora Welty - “Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson - “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
Image Courtesy: ShootDotEdit Customer @dianenicolephoto
- “If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”
– Eve Arnold - “When a moment in front of me appears to be particularly special, whether it be by beauty or experience, I capture it. I usually find a reason to justify taking that photo – symmetry, or color, or contrast – and it’s my hope that my photography sheds light onto what I see and do on a daily basis.”
– Connor Franta - “Whatever situations you’re in, you have to find a way to rock it.”
– Mary Marantz - “Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.”
– David Alan Harvey - “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”
– Diane Arbus - “Perception isn’t reality, it’s the only reality.”
– Amy and Jordan Demos - “You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper.”
– William Albert Allard - “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 - “Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.”
– Ansel Adams - “Fear is the thing that prohibits a lot of photographers from reaching their full potential.” Are you afraid of diving in? Or are you afraid because you don’t have time to do everything? Outsourcing might help!
– Collin Pierson - “I love the people I photograph. I mean, they’re my friends. I’ve never met most of them or I don’t know them at all, yet through my images I live with them.”
– Bruce Gilden - “When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I’d like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.”
– Annie Leibovitz - “No place is boring if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and a pocket full of unexposed film.”
– Robert Adams - “Clients love pictures where they’re laughing versus just smiling. That’s because there’s emotion behind it. Because you’re capturing energy, not just a still image.”
– Jen Rozenbaum - “A photograph is memory in the raw.”
– Carrie Latet
SOME OF OUR FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
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- “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”
– Aaron Siskind - “I threw myself into this artform because photography had given me a new sense of mission and identity.”
– Bob Anderson - “The eye should learn to listen before it looks.”
– Robert Frank - “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”
– Jim Richardson - “Photography is about capturing souls not smiles.”
– Dragan Tapshanov - “Spend more time working on posing, expressions, and creating energy between the couple and you – they need to feel the energy that makes them react. Remember, reaction is part of the pose.” Here’s our tips on posing with confidence.
– Roberto Valenzuela - “I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles are.”
– Ellen Von Unwerth - “Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”
– Destin Sparks - “It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.”
– Paul Strand - “The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer.”
– Steven Pinker - “Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.”
– W. Eugene Smith - “Only photograph what you love.”
– Tim Walker
- “What makes a photograph a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.”
– John Berger - “Photography is a love affair with life.”
– Burk Uzzle - “My photography is the result of being there at the right moment.”
– Rene Burri - “The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality.”
– Scott Lorenzo - “The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.”
– Susan Meiselas - “Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.”
– Tony Benn - “There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.”
– Robert Heinecken - “Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.”
– Berenice Abbott - “Photography is truth.”
– Jean-Luc Godard - “Photography is the beauty of life captured.”
– Tara Chisolm - “Photographing a culture in the here and now often means photographing the intersection of the present with the past.”
– David DuChemin - “I am not interested in shooting new things – I am interested to see things new.”
– Ernst Haas - “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”
– Elliott Erwitt - “I feel more like a creative artist using photography because there’s – the digital work is so interesting now. It’s come to that. I have had many different stages of photography – there are many different ways to take photos. But I feel now I’m in that stage of my life where I use the camera, you know, in that way.”
– Annie Leibovitz - “Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.”
– Yousuf Karsh
Image Courtesy: ShootDotEdit Customer @narvoldphotography - “Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.”
– Matt Hardy - “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”
– Ansel Adams - “I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.”
– Diane Arbus - “I think that emotional content is an image’s most important element, regardless of the photographic technique. Much of the work I see these days lacks the emotional impact to draw a reaction from viewers, or remain in their hearts.”
– Anne Geddes - “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
– Robert Frank - “Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”
– Yousuf Karsh
- “The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.”
– Gordon Parks - “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson - “My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.”
– Steve McCurry - “I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph.”
– Leon Levinstein
- “Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.”
– Steven Pinker - “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 - “Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.”
– Paul Strand - “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 - “Why do we use flash at all? Because photography is not the same as eyesight. We can see in low-light situations where cameras, dependent upon a physical process to record visual information, are half-blind.”
– David Hewson - “A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”
– Edward Steichen
