101 Epic Photography Quotes + Sayings

Photography is a long journey, but it can be enjoyed by anyone. We believe a good photographer is always experimenting and looking for their next photo so this long list of photography quotes is meant to inspire your next shoot.

We’ve organized this guide featuring quotes about photography into various topics so you can easily search for a particular theme.

Best Photography Quotes

1. “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

2. “Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.” – Martin Parr

3. “Only photograph what you love.” – Tim Walker

4. “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.” – Susan Meiselas

5. “Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” – Jean-Luc Godard

6. “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange

7. “My camera is my passport.” – Steve McCurry

8. “Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t work out, just take another shot.” – Anon

9. “When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt

10. “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” – Andy Warhol

11. “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.” – Joan Miro

12. “If I have any message worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no shortcuts in photography.” – Edward Weston

13. “Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories.” – Theodore Levitt

14. “Normally, the best photos are arrived at not by coincidence.” – Paul Goldstein

15. “All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.” – Elliott Erwitt

16. “If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.” – Jay Maisel

17. “I appreciate these moments where I can get away from life and focus on living.” – TJ Thorne

18. “Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.” – Peter Adams

Nature Photography Quotes

19. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” – William Shakespeare

20. “Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.” – Vincent Van Gogh

21. “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein

22. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu

23. “Actually, it’s nature itself that creates the most beautiful pictures, I’m only choosing the perspective.” – Katja Michael

24. “Nature never goes out of style.” – Unknown

25. “It all ultimately comes down to showing respect to nature and understanding the species you want to photograph.” – Riddhi Mukherjee

26. “Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

27. “Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” – Albert Einstein

28. “The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.” – Claude Monet

29. “Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.” – Isaac Newton

30. “I love landscape photography because it clears my thoughts and it brings light and inspiration into my mind.” – Jan Bainar

31. “Choose only one master – nature.” – Rembrandt

 32. “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” – Laura Ingalls Wilder

33. “I like to shoot peaceful and minimalistic pictures with respect for nature, pictures that get your attention a bit longer.” – Piet Haaksma

34. “The typical nature photograph shows a butterfly on a pretty flower. The conservation photograph shows the same thing, but with a bulldozer coming at it in the background.” – Joel Sartore

35. “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit .” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Black and White Photography Quotes

36. “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

37. “In photography, there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander

38. “Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.” – Doris Lessing

39. “We see in color all the time. Black and white is therefore immediately an interpretation of the world, rather than a copy.” – Michael Kenna

40. “The special factor about black and white photography is that it doesn’t just copy the reality, but it represents it with its own language.” – Gian Marco Marano

41. “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

42. “A good color picture is usually a good black and white too.” – John Beardsworth

43. “The world is in color, you have to work at black and white.” – Andrew Maclean

44. “Black and white images take you beyond what most people photograph.” – Rob Sheppard

45. “There’s something strange and powerful about black and white imagery.” – Stefan Kanfer

46. “Black and white can transform a scene into something magical.” – Rob Sheppard

47. “Smile so damn bright that even black and white can’t dull your shine.” – Tilicia Haridat

48. “Black and white always looks modern, whatever that word means.” – Karl Lagerfeld

49. “Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.” – Eliott Erwitt

50. “The most colorful thing in the world is black and white, it contains all colors and at the same time excludes all.” – Vikrmn

Funny Photography Quotes

51. “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

52. “Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.” – Diane Arbus

53. “Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the photo is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

54. “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.” – Lewis Hine

55. “When the world asks, “what was it like?” Only the photographers can say, “See!” – Mark Denman

56. “Photography is an itch that won’t go away. No matter how much you scratch it.” – Dara McGrath

57. “Once photography enters your bloodstream, it is like a disease.” – Anon

58. “Since I’m inarticulate, I express myself with images.” – Helen Levitt

59. “A photograph is like a recipe – the memory is the finished dish.” – Carrie Latet

60. “No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.” – Robert Adams

61. “I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.” – Diane Arbus

62. “Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.” – Joe McNally

63. “The best photographers do not need 50,000 dollars worth of gear. Look what Ansel Adams did with a Kodak brownie camera. A good photographer has a way of seeing (perspective) that is different from the mundane.” – David Hultgren

64. “Just be prepared to look back in a few years on yourself, and your photos, and laugh.” – Ben Chrisman

65. “There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.” – Abraham Lincoln

66. “People say photographs don’t lie, mine do.” – David LaChapelle

67. “The quickest way to make money at photography is to sell your camera.” – Anonymous

68. “Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.” – Elliott Erwitt

Wedding Photography Quotes

69. “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

70. “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.” – Jim Richardson

71. “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

72.  “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.” – Don McCullin

73. “I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles are.” – Ellen Von Unwerth

74. “Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.” – David Alan Harvey

75. “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

76. “If you force it and you keep looking for moments then you’ll end up shooting what you think the wedding should look like rather than actual moments that are unfolding in front of you.” – Joe Buissink

77. “A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.” – Annie Leibovitz

78. “It is a profound honor as a photographer to witness two people falling in love.” – Jesh de Rox

79. “It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt

80. “What I love about Black & White photographs is that they’re more like reading the book than seeing the movie” – Jennifer Price

81. “Life is in color, but black and white is more realistic.” – Samuel Fuller

82. “It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.” – Paul Strand

83. “Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments.” – Alex Tehrani

84. “All of us imagine a wedding as the happiest time for a family but that doesn’t cross off the fact that it is also the most chaotic time.” – Pooja Agnihotri

85. “Photography is the beauty of life captured.” – Tara Chisolm

86. “The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed.” – Anne Geddes

Ansel Adams Photography Quotes

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer who is well known for his images of the American West. You can check out his gallery here.

87. “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” – Ansel Adams

88. “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print the performance.”
– Ansel Adams

89. “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” – Ansel Adams

90. “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams

91. “If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph.” — Ansel Adams

92. “There are always two people in every photo: the photographer and the viewer.” – Ansel Adams

93. “In my mind, I visualize how a particular… sight will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.” – Ansel Adams

94. “It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.” – Ansel Adams

95. “Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment.” – Ansel Adams

96. “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” – Ansel Adams

97. “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” – Ansel Adams

98. “Sometimes I arrive just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter.” – Ansel Adams

99. “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” – Ansel Adams

100. “You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”- Ansel Adams

101. “Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.” – Ansel Adams

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We hope this guide featuring the best photography quotes helps to inspire your next photoshoot!

Please let us know if you have any questions about photography quotes or photography in the comments below.

Happy Shooting,

Mark and Kristen

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