Top 344 Photography Quotes

My father thought photography was done by lowlifes.

The role of photography in crisis and recovery is fascinating, a dance between providing access and destroying the magic and mystique of the monarchy.

I don’t need the money I generate from photography to support myself.

My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles – that’s me. Everything that’s in front of the camera, I bring you.

Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.

Philip Greenspun had a huge impact on me. He was the first person I knew of that embraced online communities, created a real business around open source, gave back to the community through education, and inspired me to explore photography.

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment – this very moment – to stay.

Magazines that depend on photography, and design, and long reads, and quality stuff, are going to do just fine despite the Internet and cable news.

I’d really likely to shoot wildlife documentaries. I watched so many of those as a child, and I’m quite into wildlife and love photography as well, so that’s something I’d like to do.

Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.

As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.

I went to art school, wanting to be a painter and then I got into photography. Then it was movies, and I liked the images. One of the things that interested me in film was that I was communicating in images. That was something I did intuitively and could not even talk about until I started having to do interviews.

I became enamored with photography when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I’ve been at it ever since. I studied seriously in the ’70s.

There are those photographers who have made a whole career doing commercial work but have never had a museum show, and then there are others who’ve only had museum shows but couldn’t survive for five seconds in the real world of photography. But I’ve done absolutely everything.

I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father’s support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.

Photography is a demanding action sport. The light can change so quickly. I often find myself sprinting so that I can catch the perfect light falling on a photogenic subject.

Memories. That’s the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans.

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.

Biking and photography are a perfect combination for me.

I am someone who takes pleasure in exploring the full scale of the medium photography. I am a photographer.

Digital photography makes you a better photographer.

In terms of digital photography, I continue to print and use film for the most part. I still shoot with film, 21/4 film specifically, and I love it. I love it because I know what it does, how it really responds to light.

I loved photography but was frustrated by the limitations of cameras. When trying to take a picture of a friend’s young, active daughter using my DSLR, it was impossible to capture the fleeting moments.

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it’s very physical.

Create an inspiration board before your trip! If you’re like me and love photography, food, and great experiences, chances are you have a Pinterest board filled with travel inspo.

For those aspiring to make a living from travel photography, it’s a sad fact that the boring shots are the shots that are going to make you money.

I love Rauschenberg. I love that he created a turning point in visual history, that he redefined the idea of beauty, that he combined painting, sculpture, photography, and everyday life with such gall, and that he was interested in, as he put it, ‘the ability to conceive failure as progress.’

For ‘Star Wars’ I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography.

Like Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, and so many others before me, sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography.

But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years.

Lack of courage or means often deters the European woman from more independent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom to choose her occupation, in spite of brilliant examples of successful undertakings of women, in photography, hotel or boarding-house management, dress-making, etc.

I do read many of the photography magazines from the U.K. and abroad.

I have a master’s degree in photography as a fine art, and I would call my work primarily conceptual. I don’t carry cameras with me wherever I go. I get an idea of a subject matter I want to deal with and I pull out my cameras.

Photography suits the temper of this age – of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

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

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.

The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the sense of beauty, a beauty that penetrates you.

I was really nervous working with actors, since I come from a photography background.

I’m staying with film, and with silver prints, and no Photoshop. That’s the way I learned photography: You make your picture in the camera. Now, so much is made in the computer… I’m not anti-digital; I just think, for me, film works better.

Everybody’s got to do something… I’d been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors’ children and so on.

I’ve been taking photographs since I was a teenager, and fashion has taught me a lot more about photography. It’s definitely inspired me.

Photography, painting or poetry – those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things; they are my way of communicating.

I wanted to be a director of photography for a while, because I’m fascinated by what they do. You’re made to look good by them and you can learn so much from talking to them.

Photography can be a volatile situation. It can be very potent.

With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.

Photography is about light and what it does and how it is captured on a piece of negative.

‘Humans of New York’ wasn’t the result of a fully finished idea that I thought of and then executed; it was an evolution. There were hundreds of tiny evolutions that came from me loving photography.

I did take my camera along, as I felt there wouldn’t be enough time to draw the things I wanted to do. I did some drawing and did a lot of photography but I was not part of Stryker’s outfit at all.

I wanted to be a scientist. I did a thesis on lions. But I realised photography can show things writing can’t. Lions were my professor of photography.

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

Photography has always been capable of manipulation.

In my photography, I always lean towards the underprivileged because that’s where I came from. When I went to the wars, I attempted to go and stand by those who were being trodden on. By that, I mean people like the Palestinians. When I go to India, I see really the poorest people, and I tend to be drawn to them.

I’ve been working with photography for many years.

I don’t think I ever really felt comfortable with photography as my sole medium. But it wasn’t really until I became a mother – I really credit that to opening me up artistically, I think because it was such an empowering birth for me – it gave me the confidence to explore different modes of expression.