For most people photography is a love affair they can’t let go of. Whether you’re a keen amateur or fully fledged professional, the compulsion to keep shooting is overwhelming. But the hobby or job can often be one of isolation where you work alone, so it’s always reassuring to learn that other photographers think like you. Here are 40 inspirational photography quotes from some of the most influential names in the world of art and photography…
“The first 10,000 photographs are your worst” – Henry Cartier-Bresson
“Photography is a love affair with life.” – Burk Uzzle
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” – Robert Capa
“Photography helps people to see.” – Berenice Abbott
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” – Alfred Stieglitz
“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” – Ansel Adams
“In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander
“The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality.” – Scott Lorenzo
“I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.” – Gilles Peress
“Photography is an itch that won’t go away. No matter how much you scratch it.” – Dara McGrath
“The camera has always been a guide, and it’s allowed me to see things and focus on things that maybe an average person wouldn’t even notice.” – Don Chadwick
“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely every hundredth of a second.” – Mark Riboud
“Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.” – David Alan Harvey
“A photograph is a click away. A good photograph is a thousand clicks away and a better one, a million clicks away.” – Kowtham Kumar K
“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” – Andy Warhol
“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I am going to take tomorrow.” – Imogen Cunningham
“When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.” – Alfred Eisenstaed
“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” – Diane Arbus
“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” – Ansel Adams
“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 can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Berenice Abott
“Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communication, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation, and execution.” – Ansel Adams
“A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.” – Eudora Welty
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams
“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
“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Berenice Abbott
“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
“Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.” – Diane Arbus
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange
“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” – Diane Arbus
“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.” – Elliott Erwitt
“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” – Richard Avedon
“My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.” – Steve McCurry
“Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.” – Yousuf Karsh
“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
– Imogen Cunningham
“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
“Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth-of-field.” – Peter Adams
“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
“Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” – Susan Sontag
“Only photograph what you love.” – Tim Walker