Martin ten Dam

“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” – Ansel Adams

“Photography helps people to see.” – Berenice Abbott

“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” – Ansel Adams

“Taking pictures is savouring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” – Marc Riboud

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life.” – Joan Miro

“I think if I ever get satisfied, I’ll have to stop. It’s the frustration that drives you.” – Eve Arnold

“One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.” – Dorothy Lange

“When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt

“There’s no dividing line between adventure and photography.” – Chris Noble

“Which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” – Imogen Cunningham

“The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality.” – Scott Lorenzo

“If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence.” – Richard Avedon

“I don’t need to know anything about the people I photograph, but it’s important that I recognise something about myself in them.” – Rineke Dijkstra

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” – Edward Steichen

“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like; it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” – Paul Caponigro

“My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.” – Helmut Newton

“A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.” – Annie Leibovitz

“Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.” – Bill Brandt

“A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars.” – Guy Le Querrec

“Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn’t look like somebody else’s work.” – William Klein

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

“You become technically proficient whether you want to or not, the more you take pictures.” – William Eggleston

“Never stop looking, no matter where you are, everywhere there are good photographs.” – Art Wolfe

“If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.” – Jim Richardson

“You are responsible for every part of your image, even the parts you’re not interested in.” – Jay Maisel

“The more specific you are, the more general it’ll be.” – Diane Arbus

“The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” – Susan Sontag

“In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!” – Ted Grant

“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart, and head.” – Cartier-Bresson

“The secret of photography is the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.” – Walker Evans

“To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.” – Edward Weston

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” – Robert Capa

“I can’t tell you how many pictures I’ve missed, ignored, trampled or otherwise lost, just ’cause I’ve been so hell-bent on getting the shot I think I want.” – Joe McNally

“The satisfaction comes from working next to 500 photographers and coming away with something different.” – David Burnett

“There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.” – Ruth Bernhard

“Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.” – David Alan Harvey

“All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.” – Elliott Erwitt

“Ultimately, simplicity is the goal in every art, and achieving simplicity is one of the hardest things to do, yet it’s easily the most essential.” – Pete Turner

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” – Diane Arbus

“Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.” – Ambrose Bierce

“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” – Andy Warhol

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” – Diane Arbus

“Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.” – Garry Winogrand

“A photograph is a collision between a person with a camera and reality. The photograph is typically as interesting as the collision is.” – Charles Harbutt

“A good photograph is like a good hound dog, dumb, but eloquent.” – Eugène Atget

“To me a photograph is a page from life, and that being the case, it must be real.” – Weegee

“If you don’t have anything to say, your photographs are not going to say much.” – Gordon Parks

“Photography is truth. And cinema is truth twenty-four times a second.” – Jean-Luc Godard

“If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that’s a good picture.“ – Eddie Adams

“Photographing a cake can be art.” – Irving Penn

“To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces.” – Ansel Adams

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange

“Wherever there is light, one can photograph.” – Alfred Stieglitz

“The best camera is the one that’s with you.” – Chase Jarvis

“Photography helps people to see.” – Berenice Abbott

“I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs.” – Wayne Miller

“Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.” – Peter Adams

“It’s more important to click with people than to click the shutter.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt

“Photography’s 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent moving furniture.” – Gregory Heisler

“For every negative that is a disappointment, there is one that is a joy.” – Edward S Curtis

“Photography: so many attempts – so few masterpieces.” – James Elliott

“The first 10,000 shots are the worst.” – Helmut Newton

“If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.” – Lewis Hine

“Only photograph what you love.” – Tim Walker

“I didn’t write the rules. Why should I follow them?”  – W Eugene Smith