Inspirational photography quotes from photographers for photographers – 52 PhotoQuotes 2016.
January 2016
“Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes”.
“Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art“.
“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”.
“I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.”
February 2016
“Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.”
“Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself”.
“I’m always mentally photographing everything as practice”.
“We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant”.
March 2016
“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them”.
“Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be”.
“Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare”.
“A very subtle difference can make the picture or not”.
“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”.
April 2016
“Photography helps people to see”.
“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”.
“The Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent tings, but because on each occasion (i)it fills the sight by force(i), and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed (that we can sometimes call it mild does not contradict its violence: many say that sugar is mild, but to me sugar is violent, and I call it so)”.
“Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion… the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate”.
May 2016
“In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv”.
“I just think it’s important to be direct and honest with people about why you’re photographing them and what you’re doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul”.
“What’s really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer”.
“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer”.
June 2016
“The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal”.
“No photographer is as good as the simplest camera”.
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera”.
“Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is… the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own”.
“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence”.
July 2016
“I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.”.
“I 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.”.
“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.”.
“Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can.”.
August 2016
“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs”.
“Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event. During the work, you have to be sure that you haven’t left any holes, that you’ve captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.”.
“I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.”.
“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce”.
“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know”.
September 2016
“I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.”.
“I threw myself into this artform because photography had given me a new sense of mission and identity”.
“There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept”.
“Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence”.
October 2016
“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are”.
“Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that’s what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. It’s just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities. Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it”.”
“Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera”.
“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do”.
November 2016
“A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere”.
“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment”.
“The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me”.
“Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation”.
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough”.
December 2016
“The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality”.
“Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself”.
“Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection”.
“Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution”.