“You only get one sunrise and one sunset a

day, and you only get so many days on the

planet. A good photographer does the

math and doesn’t waste either.”

Galen Rowell

 

 

“What I like about photographs is that they

capture a moment that’s gone forever,

impossible to reproduce.”

Karl Lagerfeld

 

 

 

“You learn to see by practice. It’s just like playing

tennis, you get better the more you play.

the more you look around at things, the more you see.

The more you photograph, the more you realize what can

be photographed and what can’t be photographed.

You just have to keep doing it

Eliot Porter

 

 

 

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

Ansel Adams

 

 

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.   

Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

 

Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. 

Matt Hardy

 

 

Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times…I just shoot at what interests me at that moment.   

Elliott Erwitt

 

 

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

Imogen Cunningham

 

 

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.   

Ansel Adams

 

 

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
Ansel Adams

 

 

To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting 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

 

 

The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.
Henri Cartier Bresson

 

 

The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.
W. Eugene Smith

 

 

Photography is love affair with life.
Burk Uzzle

 

 

Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.
Garry Winogrand

 

 

Thanks to my effort in that last 40 years, there has been more paper and film wasted.
Man Ray

 

 

Look, I’m not an intellectual – I just take pictures.
Helmut Newton

 

 

Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.
Peter Adams

 

 

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

 

 

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.
Robert Doisneau

 

 

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
Dorothea Lange

 

 

Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.
Yousuf Karsh

 

 

I am not interested in rules of conversation. Photography is not a sport.
Bill Brandt

 

 

Every other artist begin with a blank canvas, a piece of paper… the photographer begins with the finished product.
Edward Steichen

 

 

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.
Eudora Welty

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
Berenice Abbott

 

 

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

 

 

There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.   

Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

 

Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others.   

Robert Frank

 

 

Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode – from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage – the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected.   

Ralph Gibson

 

 

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

 

 

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion…the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.   

Dorothea Lange

 

 

One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time.   

Annie Leibovitz

 

 

If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.   

Eve Arnold

 

 

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. 

George Eastman

 

 

When I was on trips I used to put Polaroid’s in a container with sea water, sand and pebbles. I’d swirl it all around to get scratches. It’s this random element that I call ‘the drip’. It’s the drip which might splash onto the other side of the canvas when you’re working on a painting and make you think ‘that is good’, possibly leading you to explore other things. My whole life is spent in search of the drip; it can change everything.   

David Bailey

 

 

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.   

Cecil Beaton

 

 

If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.   

Jay Maisel

 

 

I see something special and show it to the camera. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.   

Sam Abell

 

 

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.   

Ansel Adams

 

 

Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.   

Yousuf Karsh

 

 

Remember that the person you are photographing is 50% of the portrait and you are the other 50%. You need the model as much as he or she needs you. If they don’t want to help you, it will be a very dull picture.   

Lord Patrick Lichfield

 

 

A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they’ll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won’t do a thing for you if you don’t have anything in your head or in your heart.   

Arnold Newman

 

 

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.  

Diane Arbus

 

 

Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.  

Matt Hardy

 

 

Pictures you have taken have an influence on those that you are going to make. That’s life!
John Sexton

 

One very important difference between color and monochromatic photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state. Much can be implied by suggestion, but statement demands certainty… absolute certainty.
Paul Outerbridge

 

The photographer Ruth Bernhard used to tell me that this is like asking somebody how they evolved their signature. It is not something I’ve ever worked on consciously. I think style is just the end result of personal experience. It would be problematic for me to photograph in another style. I’m drawn to places and subject matter that have personal connections for me and I photograph in a way that seems right. Where does it all come from, who knows?
Michael Kenna

 

A photograph is usually looked at but seldom looked into.
Ansel Adams

 

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
Dorothea Lange

 

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper… the photographer begins with the finished product.
Edward Steichen

 

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
Dorothea Lange

 

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

 

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term – selectivity.
Berenice Abbott

 

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.
Elliot Erwitt

 

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

 

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts
Walker Evans

 

I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost – that is important.
Jacques-Henri Lartigue

 

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

 

Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.
Yousuf Karsh

 

Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject.
Eliot Porter

 

I like form and shape and strength in pictures.
Herb Ritts

 

The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.
Paul Strand

 

In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.
Alfred Stieglitz

 

In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.
August Sander

 

I don’t think there’s any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.
Imogen Cunningham

 

Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters. 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 records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.
Edward Steichen

 

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.
Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.
Lewis Hine

 

Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing, light is everything.
Leonard Missone

 

If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.
Robert Capa

 

Photography helps people to see.
Berenice Abbott

 

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.
Minor White

 

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.
Robert Doisneau

 

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

 

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.
Bill Brandt

 

When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things.
Wynn Bullock

 

Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.
Ansel Adams

 

It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.
Alfred Eisenstaedt

 

Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison d’etre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison d’etre, which lives on in itself.
Andre Kertesz

 

I don’t get wrapped up in technique and the like.
Fay Godwin

 

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

 

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?
Ernst Haas

 

Everywhere I look and most of the time I look, I see photographs.
Bert Hardy

 

I think everything can be painted because painting can change reality; but everything cannot be photographed and the photographer often comes home empty-handed, with images which (often) have a documentary interest, but which rarely go further than that. One has to be completely available, very tenacious and admit that many subjects won’t give any results… and a miracle sometimes happens, without warning.
Martine Franck

 

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that’s impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.
Arnold Newman

 

When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls!
Ted Grant

 

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

 

I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don’t find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges.
William Albert Allard