QUOTES FROM THE MASTERS

Welcome, fellow photographers from around the world. I have collected quotations that I hope will help promote the art of photography. I have tried to accurately credit all writers for the quotations I have used. If anyone can offer corrections or additional information, it will be appreciated. If any source objects to being quoted here or if I have strayed into any copyrighted materials, my sincere apology - please advise me and, if you wish, your quotation will be removed.
Your help is needed to make this an interesting site.I intend to update this site regularly, so please check back from time to time. Thanks for your visit, and enjoy…………..Rajendra

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

~Ambrose Bierce
I shutter to think how many people are underexposed and lacking depth in this field."
Rick Steves, travel guide and author
All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, "here it is." -
Ansel Adams

"People think that all cameramen do is point the camera at things, but it's a heck of a lot more complicated than that!"
-Larry in Groundhog Day
Just as a fisherman cannot catch fish unless his line is in the water, a wildlife photographer cannot shoot great wildlife images unless he or she is out there with camera in hand and the knowledge of what to do then the 'magnificent moment' occurs."
-George H. Harrison, in Magnificent Moments: The World's Greatest Wildlife Photographs
"Life is like a good black and white photograph, there's black, there's white, and lots of shades in between."
-Karl Heiner
"You press the button and we do the rest."
-Kodak advertisement
"You don't take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it."
-Pentax advertisement
The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt. -
Henri Cartier-Bresson
To take photographs means to recognize -- simultaneously and within a fraction of a second -- both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis. –
Henri Cartier-Bresson
"Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop"

-Ansel Adams
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
~Ansel Adams

"A good photograph is knowing where to stand."
-Ansel Adams
"There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept."
-Ansel Adams
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~Ansel Adams
Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop.
~Usman B. Asif
Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner. ~Author unknown
"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer."-Ansel Adams
Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.
~Ansel Adams
No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.
~Robert Adams, Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques, May 1995
When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls! ~Ted Grant
Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.
~Ansel Adams
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.
~Lewis Hine
If you are not passionately devoted to an idea, you can make very pleasant pictures but they won't make you cry.
-Ruth Bernhard
There is no art which affords less opportunity to execute expression than photography. Everything is concentrated in a few seconds, when after perhaps an hours seeking, waiting, and hesitation, the photographer sees the realization of his inward vision, and in that moment he has one advantage over most arts - his medium is swift enough to record his momentary inspiration.
-Sadakichi Hartmann
The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system.
-Walker Evans