Whether it’s serious or downright hilarious we all can appreciate quotes that inspire us in some way or at the very least cause for pause and thought.  Some of these have been accumulated over time in my note taking and others were discovered when thinking about this blog post. They were chosen because they reflect how I view photography or nature, inspire me personally, portray the past, present, future of photography or merely provide a good laugh. After all Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine” – Lord Byron.

I am sure a few you have heard before yet I am also sure there are some you haven’t. From some of the biggest names in photography to others not as well known or not professional photographers at all, to simply nature related inspiration for your next landscape adventure. Spend a few minutes below to get your thoughts flowing. These are intentionally in no particular order.  Feel free to comment below with your favorite photography or nature related quote.

 

“In a world and a life that moves so fast, photography just makes the sound go out and it makes you stop and take a pause. Photography calms me.” – Drew Barrymore

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” – Ernst Haas

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” – George Eastman

“With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.” – Robert Mapplethorpe

“The whole nature of photography has changed with the advent of a camera in everybody’s hand.” – Sally Mann

“I find it some of the hardest photography and the most challenging photography I’ve ever done. It’s a real challenge to work with the natural features and the natural light.” – Galen Rowell

“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.” – Nancy Pelosi

“I don’t have a favorite photo. As a photographer, I have attachments to each image. Not the one photo: the experience of getting the photos is the challenge or the thing.” – Michael Muller

“It is a peculiar part of the good photographer’s adventure to know where luck is most likely to lie in the stream, to hook it, and to bring it in without unfair play and without too much subduing it.” – James Agee

“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 Siskind

“Photographers deal with a lot of crop.” – Unknown

“With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.” – Ernst Haas

“Photographers are violent people. First they frame you, then they shoot you, then they hang you on the wall.” – Unknown

“The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.” – Robert Mapplethorpe

“The grass is always greener when you crank up the saturation in Photoshop.” – Unknown

“If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better.” – Galen Rowell

“Cheap photography isn’t good, my dear, and good photography isn’t cheap.” – Unkown

“I think a photograph, of whatever it might be – a landscape, a person – requires personal involvement. That means knowing your subject, not just snapping at what’s in front of you.” – Frans Lanting

“How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb and 49 to say, ‘I could have done that!” – Unknown

“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment.” – Ansel Adams

“The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?” – Edward Weston

“People say photographs don’t lie, mind do.” – David LaChapelle

“You must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment a photographer is creative. The moment! Once you miss it. It is gone, forever.” – Henri- Cartier-Bresson

“Every photograph is the photographer’s opinion about something. It’s how they feel about something: what they think is horrible, tragic, funny.” – Mary Ellen Mark

“I’m always mentally photographing everything as practice.” – Minor White

“You might be a photographer if you won’t even share a cell phone picture without editing it.” – Unkown

“Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget.” – Robin Williams

“It was only after a while, after photographing mines and clear-cutting of forests in Maine, that I realized I was looking at the components of photography itself. Photography uses paper made from trees, water, metals, and chemistry. In a way, I was looking at all these things that feed into photography.” – David Maisel

“Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.” – Piercy W Harris

“For me, pointing and clicking my phone is absolutely fine. People say that isn’t the art of photography but I don’t agree.” – Annie Lennox


“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” – Alfred Stiegltiz

“Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important. Capture the good times. And if things don’t work out, just take another shot.” – Unknown

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.” – Edward Abbey

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau

“There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.” – Abraham Lincoln

“A camera didn’t make a great picture anymore than a typewriter wrote a great novel.” – Peter Adams

“Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology.” – Ken Rockwell

“Warning: I am about to snap!”- Unknown

“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.” – Edward Steichen

“When you are a photographer, you work all the time, because your eye is the first camera.” – Patrick Demarchelier

 

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