Photography Quotes

You may have seen the quotation on one of the photographs on my welcome page: "Every picture tells a story". If it's a good picture then it ought to. Another truism is that "A picture is worth a thousand words" and this saying is believed to have its roots in China and was originally "One picture is worth ten thousand words". I guess nine thousand words got lost along the way.

Most of the following are from renowned photographers. My favourite is from the master landscape photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984)  who was particularly prolific when it came to quotes: "A good photograph is knowing where to stand". He certainly knew.

• A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know - Diane Arbus
• There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs - Ansel Adams
• 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 Sussman
• There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. - Ansel Adams
• Results are uncertain even among the more experienced photographers. - Matthew Brady
• The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score and the print the performance. - Ansel Adams
• I began to realize that the camera sees the world differently than the human eye and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed - Galen Rowell
• Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer.  it makes you a Nikon owner. - Unknown but as a Conon man I could have written it!
• You don't take a photograph, you make it. -Ansel Adams
• The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. - William Thackeray
• The more you photograph, the more you realize what can and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it. - Eliot Porter
• In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality - Alfred Stieglitz
• The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. - William Thackeray
• When you photograph a face . . .you photograph the soul behind it. - Jean -Luc Godard
• If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. - Lewis Hine
• The camera can photograph thought. - Dirk Bogarde
• The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it? -Edward Weston
• Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved. - Bill Brandt
• The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera. - Yousuf Karsh