1,962 Quotes About Photography

I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.

To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed.

...the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.

Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.