100 Inspirational & Uplifting Photography Quotes in 2022
A photographer is like the silent observer that sees something others don’t. It is this gift that makes photographers valuable — their vision illuminates the world in a new light. Throughout a photographer’s career, it’s important to not only find the subject you love to shoot but also find the creative energy and a new approach that will make their work stand out.
Photography is more than just about seeing, it’s having the technical skills and the artistic vision to execute your work. You can always work harder to improve your art and here is a little shove in a new direction — inspirational photography quotes with pictures from professionals in their field.
100 quotes about photography to lift your spirits
The most popular photography sayings
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “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.”
— William Albert Allard
- “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.”
— David Bailey
- “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
- “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
- “Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.”
— Martin Parr
- “John Loengard, the picture editor at Life, always used to tell me, ”If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.”
— Joe McNally
- “No, you don’t shoot things. You capture them. Photography means painting with light. And that’s what you do. You paint a picture only by adding light to the things you see.”
— Katja Michael
- “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
— Robert Frank
- “Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?”
— Duane Michals
- “Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
— Imogen Cunningham
- “Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.”
— Yousuf Karsh
- “My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.”
— Steve McCurry
- “What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.”
— John Berger
- “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”
— Andy Warhol
- “Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.”
— Matt Hardy
- “I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today’s existence.”
— Robert Mapplethorpe
- “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.”
— Aaron Siskind
- “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 Erwittdy Warhol
- “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
- “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”
— Ansel Adams
Best portrait photography quotes
- “It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.”
— Paul Caponigro
- “The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.”
— Henry Cartier-Bresson
- “My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.”
— Helmut Newton
- “A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks”
— Richard Avedon
- “A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, the Testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was.”
— Philippe Halsman
- “When you photograph a face, you photograph the soul behind it.”
— Jean-Luc Godard
Inspiring nature photography quotes
- “Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment.”
— Ansel Adams
- “If you can see it, you can shoot it.”
— Ted Grant
- “Climb up on some hill at sunrise. Everybody needs perspective once in a while, and you’ll find it there.”
— Robb Sagendorph
- “The landscape is like being there with a powerful personality and I’m searching for just the right angles to make that portrait come across as meaningfully as possible.”
— Galen Rowell
- “Sometimes I arrive just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter.”
— Ansel Adams
- “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
- “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”
— Jim Richardson
- “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.”
— Ansel Adams
- “As a landscape photographer we should be open to possibilities, for one thing often leads to another.”
— Michael Kenna
- “This is the gift of the landscape photograph, that the heart finds a place to stand.”
— Emmet Gowin
- “I’m inviting the spirits into my photography. It’s an act of God.”
— Hiroshi Sugimoto
Street photography quotes
- “If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, it’s a street photograph.”
— Bruce Gilden
- “I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner?”
— Alex Webb
- “No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want.”
— Ken Rockwell
- “I love the people I photograph. I mean, they’re my friends. I’ve never met most of them or I don’t know them at all, yet through my images I live with them.”
— Bruce Gilden
- “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
- “I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance.”
— Alec Soth
- “Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.”
— Bruno Barbey
- “Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.”
— Ernst Haas
- “Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments.”
— Alex Tehrani
- “It’s not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It’s their intimate relationship with it.”
— Antoine d’Agata
- “Buy a good pair of comfortable shoes, have a camera around your neck at all times, keep your elbows in, be patient, optimistic and don’t forget to smile.”
— Matt Stuart
Black and white photography quotes
- “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”
— Ted Grant
- “When I take a black-and-white portrait, it’s not particularly meant to please you. It’s meant to talk to you; it’s meant to shame you. It’s meant to scream out at you, and it has a message.”
— Don McCullin
- “It’s more important to click with people than to click the shutter.”
— Alfred Eisenstaedt
- “Black and white is abstract; color is not. Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world.”
— Joel Sternfeld
- “I think it’s because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn’t necessarily reach the heart.”
— Kim Hunter
- “Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.”
— Elliott Erwitt
- “With black and white photography, what you have to say counts more than the way you say it.”
— Gian Marco Marano
- “There is something strange and powerful about black and white imagery.”
— Stefan Kanfer
- “Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts it absolutely. Consider the way color film usually renders blue sky, green foliage, lipstick red, and the kiddies’ playsuit. These are four simple words which must be whispered: color photography is vulgar.”
— Walker Evans
- “In black and white there are more colors than color photography, because you are not blocked by any colors so you can use your experiences, your knowledge, and your fantasy, to put colors into black and white.”
— Anders Petersen
- “What I like about black and white photographs is that they’re more like reading the book than seeing the movie.”
— Jennifer Price
- “Black and White allows me to detach from the cliche ‘souvenir photo’ approach to photography.”
— Guy Gagnon
- “To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul.”
— Andri Cauldwell
- “Black and white photography erases time from the equation.”
— Jason Peterson
Quotes about film photography
- “I’m working on bringing the instant film camera back as part of the future.”
— Lady Gaga
- “I’ve always been intimidated by the technicalities of taking photos, especially with a film camera – not just a point and shoot.”
— Taylor Kitsch
- “Whenever there’s a camera around, a video or film camera, it’s a great deal harder for those in power to bury the story.”
— Peter Gabriel
- “I like the film camera better because the film is still one hundred times better than any digital image at the moment. So, there are certain movies that you can’t really do digitally.”
— Vilmos Zsigmond
- “People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.”
— Fiona Shaw
- “I like the smell of film. I just like knowing there’s film going through the camera.”
— Steven Spielberg
- “A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”
— Orson Welles
Top family photography quotes
- “If you don’t think photos are important, wait until they’re all you have left.”
— Missy Mwac
- “A camera is a save button for the mind’s eye.”
— Roger Kingston
- “There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.”
— Abraham Lincoln
- “You will never have this day with your children again. Tomorrow they will be a little bigger then they are today. This day is a gift. Breathe and notice. Smell and touch them; study their faces and little feet and pay attention. Relish the charms of the present. Enjoy today mama. It will be over before you know it.”
— Jen Hatmaker
- ”The memories we make with our family is everything.”
— Candace Cameron Bure
- “We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.”
— Ralph Hattersley
Wedding photography quotes
- “It is a profound honor as a photographer to witness two people falling in love.”
— Jesh de Rox
- “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
- “Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.”
― David Alan Harvey
- “What we are doing is providing a space for couples to see how beautiful they really are.”
― Jesh de Rox
- “The most important thing at a wedding is to photograph the bride. The second most important thing is not to forget the groom.”
— Alix Reuters
Photography sayings that all professionals can relate to
- “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
- “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”
— Ansel Adams
- “I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph.”
— Leon Levinstein
- “I didn’t choose photography, photography chose me.”
— Gerardo Suter
- “I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.”
— Gilles Peress
- “Photography is the art of making memories tangible.”
— Destin Sparks
- “A good snapshot keeps a moment that s gone from running away.”
— Eudora Welty
- “Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”
— Destin Sparks
- “It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart, and head.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
- “When I photograph I make love.”
— Alfred Stieglitz
- “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
- “Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference.”
— Robert Frank
- “I think of photography like therapy.”
— Harry Gruyaert
- “You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”
— Joan Miro
- “Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.”
— Peter Adams
- “The pictures are there, and you just take them.”
— Robert Capa
- “My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea.”
— Edward Weston
