25 Photography Quotes

"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
- Ansel Adams

"If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough."
- Robert Capa

"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."
– Peter Lindbergh

"The important thing is not the camera but the eye."
– Alfred Eisenstaed

"There are two people in every photograph: the photographer and the viewer"
– Ansel Adams

"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms that give that event its proper expression."
– Henri Cartier-Bresson

"All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth."
– Richard Avedon

"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

My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person."
- Andy Warhol

"If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time."
- Robert Doisneau

"People say photographs don't lie, mine do."
- David LaChapelle

"The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it."
– Ansel Adams

"It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get."
– Timothy Allen

"Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop."
– Ansel Adams

"I always thought good photos were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn't that good."
– Anonymous

"If I saw something in my viewfinder that looked familiar to me, I would do something to shake it up."
– Garry Winogrand

"A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it."
– Edward Steichen

"Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow."
– Imogen Cunningham

"Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times…I just shoot at what interests me at that moment."
– Elliott Erwitt

"Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph."
– Matt Hardy

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst."
– Henri Cartier-Bresson

"I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport."
- Bill Brandt

"Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk."
- Edward Weston

"The best camera is the one that's with you."
- Chase Jarvis

"If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera."
- Lewis Hine

 - ginger twins - Redheadday 2011, Breda - photographer: Melanie Rijkers