Photography Quotations

[Heroique]

Close thy Adams; Open thy Delacroix.
(Apologies to Thomas Carlyle. )

There’s many a best-selling photograph that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
(Apologies to Flannery O’Connor. )

[Brian Ellis]

"Today is the day, now is the time." Ruth Bernhard

[William McEwen]

"There's nothing worth photographing more than 50 yards from a road," Brett Weston (paraphrased).
(Variously attributed to both Brett and Edward.)

I've heard this from several photographers:

"If you can't drive to it,

screw it."

[Mark Sawyer]

"A photograph of a leaf is not a leaf. Sometimes, it's not even a photograph."

~ Todd Walker


"Do you want to smell the stop bath concentrate? It smells like strawberries!"

~ One of my advanced photo students to beginners, their first time in the darkroom


"Through my lens passes the poetic light of universal truth and beauty, beheld on the ground glass as the inner musings of my heart and soul laid bare. It shows up as dust spots on the film."

~ Me

[ASRafferty]

You can't depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain

[Gordon Moat]

"Photography is a fad well-neigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze." - Alfred Stieglitz (1897)

[Phil O.]

This is one I've modified by taking out the word "books" and substituted with "photographs". It comes closest to saying what motivates me to photograph what I do. And it is being quoted from memory, so it is likely off a bit, other than the word change:

"My [photographs] are about my delight and wonder of the world as it is, particularly that which is natural."
- J.R.R. Tolkien

[Bryan Lemasters]

"What power lines? Awwww sh.............." - Me, and more than once.

[John Jarosz]

"A photograph is light & shadow, nothing more" Garry Winogrand

[Allen in Montreal]

"F 8 and be there!!"

All of my wire service mentors as a young newbie photographer.