Photo Quotes Archive

Previous Parting Shots Entries:

• Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost.  - Samuel Butler

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

• Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts.  -Minor White

• There will be times when you will be in the field without a camera. And, you will see the most glorious sunset or the most beautiful scene that you have ever witnessed. Don’t be bitter because you can’t record it. Sit down, drink it in, and enjoy it for what it is!  -DeGriff

• The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer. -Unknown

• Worry is the darkroom where negatives are developed. -Unknown

• Many people ask me why I am always carrying my cameras, or ask me why I am taking pictures. I often ask them,”Why do you eat?” -James Keivom

• Think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody’s face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways. - Duane Michaels

• The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.  - John W. Tukey

•Teachers don’t work in the summer, and photographers don’t shoot in in the middle of the day.  - John Loengard

• You cannot depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus. – Mark Twain

• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. – Albert Einstein

• 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

• “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

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

• “It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get.” -Timothy Allen – On editing photos

• Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. -Ansel Adams

• One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photos out of focus is an experimentation, one hundred photos out of focus is a style.  -Unknown

• When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.  -Wayne Dyer

• While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.  -Lewis Wickes Hine

• People say photographs don’t lie, mine do. -David LaChepelle

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

• 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 is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts. – Garry Winogrand

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

• 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

• “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs

• “All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”  -Richard Avedon

• “Once the amateur’s naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur. ” - Alfred Eisenstaedt