First – most important of all for photographers and artists:
"Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing; light is everything." Leonard Misonne
Amateurs worry about gear, pros about money and artists worry about light.
Anon
Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. Henri Cartier-Bresson
One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul.Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment.” Ansel Adams
“Sometimes I arrive just when God’s ready to have someone click the shutter.” Ansel Adams
Sharpness is a bourgeois concept. Henri Cartier Bresson
It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head. Henri Cartier-Bresson
To be ready is one thing, to be able to wait is another; but to seize the right moment is everything. Arthur Schnitzler
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen. Robert Bresson
I give the moment permanence. Manuel Álvarez Bravo
It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things but in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary. David Bailey
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Albert Einstein
Isn’t it amazing what so much money and so little ability can produce? Robert Hughes, Art critic (on Damien Hirst)
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. Ansel Adams
Dawn is coming. Open your eyes. Look into the sun as the new days rise.
(Stay Alive, Jose Gonzalez from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough. Robert Capa
When you photograph people in colour, you photograph their clothes;
when you photograph them in black and white, you photograph their souls.
Ted Grant
If it’s more than 500 yards from the car, it isn’t photogenic. Edward Weston
“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is given to the less talented as a consolation prize.” Robert Hughes, art critic.
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London