Top 995 Photographer Quotes & Sayings

I came up, I suppose, a fairly traditional way. I went to art college. I always wanted to be a stills photographer, really, when I was younger, and I briefly worked as a stills photographer.

What is right? Simply put, it is any assignment in which the photographer has a significant spiritual stake... spiritually driven work constitutes the core of a photographer's contribution to culture.

One thing that Life and I agreed right from the start was that one war photographer was enough for my family; I was to be a photographer of peace.

Forget about the profession of being a photographer. First be a photographer and maybe the profession will come after.

My Dad took a workshop from a photographer who worked at the Toledo Blade, a newspaper I delivered. I knew this photographer's work. My Dad took a night class from him at the University of Toledo. Without that class, I wouldn't have become a photographer, because my Dad came home and taught me what he learned in class.

Well, I'm not going to get into that. I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like "street photographer" are so stupid. I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it.

I didn't want to be a woman photographer. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my 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.

Learning how to use different formats has made me a better photographer. When I started working in medium format, it made me a better 35 mm photographer. When I started working in 4x5, it made me a better medium-format photographer.

I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it.

... the photographer is a thief who chooses what he steals (which, at this stage of the crisis, is a luxury) and does not democratize the image, that is to say, the photographer selects the pictures, a privilege which ought to be granted to the person being photographed.

I'm a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying 'I'm a photographer.'

A photographer is a photographer and an artist is an artist. I don't believe in labels or titles. Why should a painter or sculptor who has probably never challenged the rules be an artist just because his title and an art school education automatically make him one.

When people call me a photographer, I always feel like something of a charlatan—at least in Japanese. The word shashin, for photograph, combines the characters sha, meaning to reflect or copy, and shin, meaning truth, hence the photographer seems to entertain grand delusions of portraying truth.

There were just moments of the punk scene and I realized that I had to capture it. There was also this photographer in our preschool - I went to a Montessori school in Baltimore, Maryland - and they had this photographer come and take all these incredible photographs. They looked like they were from Life magazine.

The two ideas are antithetical. Insofar as photography is (or should be) about the world, the photographer counts for little, but insofar as it is the instrument of intrepid, questioning subjectivity, the photographer is all.

A poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time.

Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style. In the early nineties, Wolfgang Tillmans did just that, transforming himself into a new kind of artist-photographer of modern life.

Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

In England, I'm already labeled a rock photographer, which is a little insulting, because I'm not a rock photographer at all.

A photograph records both the thing in front of the camera and the conditions of its making... A photograph is also a document of the state of mind of the photographer. And if you were to extend the idea of the set-up photograph beyond just physically setting up the picture, I would argue that the photographer wills the picture into being.

A photographer cannot be inexperienced, or too mature. A photographer ought to be half-ripe.

I'm the world's most famous photographer, most sought after photographer, most awarded photographer.

The photographer’s vision convinces us to the degree that the photographer hides his hand.

I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal.

I used to call myself a war photographer. Now I consider myself as an antiwar photographer.

[Photography] underlines the photographer. That's the Barthesian this has been. Well, this has been for the photographer as well. The photographer is the hidden placeholder in the Barthesian equation.

... the possibility of one particular photographer's pictures lying around the corner is never realized until the photographer is there. It's one of the enigmas of photography.

To us, the difference between the #? photographer as an individual eye and the photographer as an objective recorder seems fundamental, the difference often regarded, mistakenly, as separating photography as art from #? photography as document. But both are logical extensions of what photography means: note-taking on, potentially, everything in the world, from every possible angle.

A photographer without imagination is not a good photographer.

Fantasy isn't something I put into the pictures; I don't try and inject them with a sense of play. But it's about being an honest photographer; a photograph is as much of a mirror of the photographer as it is the subject.

I didn't want to be a photographer. I wanted to play music and be a rock star. I didn't have a mentor telling me to take pictures and encouraging me. But when the music thing didn't work out, I became a photographer's assistant. And then I caught the bug.

Being a digital photographer I'm in awe of the older generation of photographers who created all those iconic cinematic style images on film, such as Man Ray's portrait of the photographer Lee Miller.

What is right? Simply put, it is any assignment in which the photographer has a significant spiritual stake...spiritually driven work constitutes the core of a photographer's contribution to culture.

I always feel I had a very lucky life. For example, I sure didn't want to go in the army: when I was drafted in the Korean War, I wanted to go as a photographer. But luckily, they put me in the infantry - luckily because the official photographer was photographing the medal awarding and all the official situations.

The creative life of the commercial photographer is like the life of a butterfly. Very seldom do we see a photographer who is really productive for more than eight or ten years.

You know, the Chinese don't like to be photographed because they believe that a part of their life is being taken away by the photographer. And in a way, they're right. The photographer is trying to get the prettiest moment of a life in his camera.

I never claim my photographs reveal some definitive truth. I claim that this is what I saw and felt about the subject at the time the pictures were made. That's all that any photographer can claim. I do not know any great photographer who would presume otherwise.

This idea fascinates me. The idea that a few seconds of watching a photographer in action can tell you his/her status in the medium. And it's true. If you watch a photographer of merit working an event he/she does not look like an amateur.

Sven Schumann did an interview with photographer Wolfgang Tillmans in Berlin addressing the question: What is photography today when everyone is a photographer? These kinds of questions and answers you find in a magazine, on paper and not on Instagram. For me this is the essence of a magazine - it's questioning what's going on today and celebrating true creativity without compromise.

One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down - so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer's instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance.

I think that the photographer must completely control his picture and bring to it all his personality, and in this area most photographs never transcend being just snapshots. When a great photographer does infuse the snapshot with his personality and vision, it can be transformed into something truly moving and beautiful.

This is how you can tell a real photographer: mostly, a real photographer does not say 'I wish I had my camera on me right now'. Instead a real photographer pulls out her camera and takes the photograph.

A photographer is a witness. He has a moral duty. Every picture must be true and honest. I believe a photographer's strength is his ability to accurately record reality. There are photographers who think they are lucky if they find unusual or special subject. But it is never the subject that is so marvelous. It is how alive and real the photographer can make it.

When I first started to take photographs in Czechoslovakia, I met this old gentleman, this old photographer, who told me a few practical things. One of the things he said was, "Josef, a photographer works on the subject, but the subject works on the photographer."

I'm in between an installation artist, video artist and photographer. And when you work with nude bodies, you're immediately called a pornographer or a fashion photographer.

I was always introduced as the Beatles photographer and I gave it up in the end. I was so unsure of myself. Am I good or am I just the Beatles photographer? People were not interested in what I did before. I could not stand it any more.

I used to live in a hostel with Bihari roommates. They used to be very excited about getting their pictures clicked, and since there weren't any mobile phones back then, they used to have a photographer accompany them everywhere. Thus, my character's personality and the photographer were incorporated into 'Dabangg.'

I was fooling around one day and looking at Yahoo! Jobs. I typed in "photo" and, of course, what comes up is "One hour photo lab" or "Be a photographer in Disneyland" or jobs that no one really wants as a photographer. I saw, by chance, this ad that said, "Wanted: Photographer for premieres and Hollywood events" and I thought, "This can not be real. This is ridiculous. No one advertizes this!" I was really suspect about it.

People say to me, "Who's your favorite kind of photographer?" Or "Who would be your favorite photographer to have in a workshop?" And I always say, "My Dad."

A photographer's main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind.

A photographer who wants to see, a photographer who wants to make fine images, must recognize the value in the familiar.

You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer's picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor - no matter what you do, and how you twist it.

What some highbrows call rapport is nothing more than a mild flirtation between photographer and the girl on the other side of the camera. Some models get so professional they can send hours flirting with the camera itself while the poor photographer is reduced to the role of spectator.

I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been.

I am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation.

My teacher introduced me to this photographer Eugène Atget. He was a French photographer in the late 1800s up until 1927 in Paris. He didn't consider himself an artist, but he was probably one of the artists of the 20th century. This guy documented all of Paris during those years. It's unbelievable. The books are phenomenal. The Museum of Modern Art has all his stuff now and [American photographer] Berenice Abbott saved his work. Not very much is known about his life, but the work is unreal and it totally spoke to me. He was the only artist for a number of years that I cared about at all.

Sometimes a photographer is a passenger, sometimes a person who stays in one place. What he watches changes constantly, but his watching never changes. He doesn't examine like a doctor, defend like a lawyer, analyze like a scholar, support like a priest, make people laugh like a comedian, or intoxicate like a singer. He only watches. This is enough. No, this is all I can do. All a photographer can do is watch. Therefore, a photographer has to watch all the time. He must face the object and make his entire body an eye. A photographer is someone who wagers everything on seeing.

The images which the [press] photographer has filtered from reality, whether particular events or the anguish of human reactions to them, already bear a stamp of authenticity which the photographer is powerless to alter by one jot or tittle; the meaning of the objects, by a process of purification, itself becomes the theme of the work.