Everyone knows the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. Great photographs can strike at our soul and inspire us. This is why it’s important to stay motivated and inspired as a photographer. Any creative field can have its ups and downs but it’s important to stick to your craft. These photography quotes are sure to inspire you to keep working.
Photography can be an up and down struggle, especially if you depend on it for income. Keeping your focus is important especially when you have to buckle down to deliver photos to a client.
Whether you’re a wedding photographer dealing with hundreds of clients or just growing your photography skills it’s important to stay inspired.
No matter your skill level here are over 150 inspirational photography quotes.
'Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.'
'I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.'
'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.'
'The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.'
'When people ask me what equipment I use – I tell them my eyes.'
'The Painter constructs, the photographer composes.'
'The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.'
'In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.'
'Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.'
'Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.'
'A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.'
'If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.'
'One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time.'
'In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color.'
'Taking an image, and freezing it, reveals how rich reality truly is.'
'A photograph shouldn’t be a picture, it should be a philosophy.'
'With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.'
'The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'
'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.'
'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.'
'Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.'
'Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.'
'I find humor in many situations and things and I tend to make photographs that point out these things. We photograph according to our character.'
'It’s weird that photographers spend years or even a whole lifetime, trying to capture moments that added together, don’t even amount to a couple of hours.'
'To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting 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.'
'I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.'
'Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.'
'The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.'
'With photography, I like to create a fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society’s natural prejudice and giving this a twist.'
'You photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really see.'
'Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four, times per second.'
'Photography helps people to see.'
'Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.'
'Traditionally, photography is supposed to capture an event that has passed; but that is not what I'm looking for. Photography brings the past into the present when you look at it.'
'The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.'
'Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.'
'For me the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It's that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom.'
'I don't need the money I generate from photography to support myself.'
'In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.'
'I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.'
'Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.'
'The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.'
'A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.'
'It doesn't matter if you're photographing a porter in a market in Marrakech or you're photographing the king of Morocco. You have the same sympathetic approach to everybody. You be nice to everybody, basically.'
'A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.'
'In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.'
'A photographer is like a cod, which produces, million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.'
'Only photograph what you love.'
'The earth is art, the photography is only the witness.'
'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.'
'An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.'
'Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.'
'When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I’d like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.'
'Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.'
'Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.'
'Arte enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.'
'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.'
'When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read the line of a poem twice.'
'Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.'
'Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.'
'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.'
'I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell.'
'Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.'
'For me, the camera us a sketch book, and instrument of intuition and spontaneity.'
'When you live by the sea, there are definite seasons when you can see the weather coming and going, which lends itself to photography.'
'People think because it's photography it's not worth as much, and because it's a woman artist, you're still not getting as much - there's still definitely that happening. I'm still really competitive when it comes to, I guess, the male painters and male artists. I still think that's really unfair.'
'Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.'
'I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.'
'Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.'
'What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.'
'If I am successful, the photograph reveals the underbelly, the overlooked and the under appreciated.'
'A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.'
'A photograph is usually looked at -seldom looked into.'
'I always use my last week’s effort as my greatest inspiration. Instead of comparing myself to what photographers around me are doing, I’m always trying to beat last week’s effort.'
'A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a persons life that reveal greater truths.'
'In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.'
'Today everything exists to end in a photograph.'
'Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.'
'The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.'
'All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.'
'Essentially what photography is is life lit up.'
'Photography is truth.'
'Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.'
'A picture is a secret about a secret. the more it tells you the less you know.'
'When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.'
'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.'
'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.'
'What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.'
'The pictures are there, and you just take them.'
'A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.'
'We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.'
'I tend to think of the act of photographing, general speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.'
'A photograph is a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.'
'Photography is the story I fail to put into words.'
'I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.'
'A lot of people think that when you have grand scenery, such as you have in Yosemite, that photography must be easy.'
'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.'
'There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.'
'Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment.'
'My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.'
'I think landscape photography in general is somewhat undervalued.'
'Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell.'
'People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.'
'What it all boils down to for me is having the enthusiasm to do something for enjoyment and being stimulated by what's around you. That's what photography does for me.'
'Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.'
'You don’t take a photograph, you make it.'
'Look at lots of exhibitions and books, and don't get hung up on cameras and technical things. Photography is about images.'
'I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.'
'There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.'
'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.'
'You don’t take a photograph. You make it.'
'One eye sees, the other feels.'
'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.'
'Today everything exists to end in a photograph.'
'Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.'
'No one moment is most important. Any moment can be something.'
'I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.'
'When I photograph, what I\’m really doing is seeking answers to things.'
'A photograph shouldn\’t be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.'
'I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs.'
'My main camera is a Nikon D3. I use a French camera from the 1800s for wet plate photography. But to me the camera really doesn't matter that much. I don't have a preference for film or digital.'
'Photography is a love affair with life.'
'If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.'
'The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality.'
'Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.'
'Be yourself. Don't copy anybody.'
'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.'
'Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.'
'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.'
'Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.'
'Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself.'
'Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.'
'If you want something to look interesting, don\’t light all of it.'
'I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles are.'
'After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavours and from there it just blossomed. I have always had to have an outlet for my creativity and when my life became more about raising my family than the bright lights of show business exploring my photo art was a great outlet for me.'
'Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.'
'I think that emotional content is an image’s most important element, regardless of the photographic technique. Much of the work I see these days lacks the emotional impact to draw a reaction from viewers, or remain in their hearts.'
'It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.'
'With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality.'
'Moreover, photography has made it possible to fix these images and now provides us with a permanent record of each observed spectrum, which can be measured out at any time.'
'The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.'
'I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.'
'It is a profound honour as a photographer to witness twopeople falling in love.'
'There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement.'
'I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.'
'Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood.'
'If you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a moment.'
'In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more than reality.'
'I find that with black and white I go straight to the person. In colour, I am more worried about the light, the clothes, the setting, etc. It is more complex. In black and white, it's the person who is important.'
'Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.'
'Photography is like sex. You know the ending. So how can you make it interesting?'
'Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.'
'While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.'
'If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.'
'My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.'
'Big game photography in Africa is mainly done from a vehicle, so then I feel I might as well take the lot.'
'To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.'
'Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.'
'You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life.'
'The whole nature of photography has changed with the advent of a camera in everybody's hand.'
'Photography started as a means of getting reference material for my paintings of nature subjects.'
'It is more important to click with people than to shutter.'
'Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.'
'I am very much aware of the visual side of things. I do a lot of photography. I often take Polaroids of things that strike me as visually interesting, just to remember them and perhaps use later.'
'A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.'
'All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.'
'Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell.'
'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.'
'We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.'
'When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!'
'Photography has been a passion of mine since I was 15. After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavours and from there it just blossomed.'
In conclusion, photography quotes have the power to inspire and motivate photographers of all levels. Whether you’re a beginner just starting out or a seasoned professional, the wisdom and insights shared by renowned photographers can help you elevate your craft and push the boundaries of your creativity.
Want more motivational quotes? Check out my friend Ryan’s list of motivational quotes. Perfect for any business owner or freelancer.
Now quit reading this article and get out there and start taking pictures!
If there are any we are missing let us know in the comments!
