It can be hard to find motivation to go out and take photographs. Either the drive isn't there, or maybe you've hit a creative rut, no matter the reason, having zero motivation for something you usually love doing just sucks. I am pretty sure we have all been there, I know I have, and if you are reading this now, it is probably because you might be feeling a little uninspired to pick up that camera as well.
Below is a collection of quotes that have helped me get back my motivation to look through the viewfinder, and start shooting again. Yeah, there are a multitude of these lists out there, so I filtered it down to the top 10 quotes (in no particular order) that have actually inspired, and helped me think about things a bit differently.
"There is one thing the photograph must contain: the humanity of the moment"
-Robert Frank
"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."
-Elliott Erwitt
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."
-Dorothea Lange
"One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time."
-Annie Leibovitz
"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
"When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. When you photograph them in black and white, you photograph their souls."
-Ted Grant
"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."
-Ansel Adams
"Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow."
-Imogen Cunningham
"If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you're not out there, you'll only hear about it."
-Jay Maisel
"Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph."
-Matt Hardy
That's the top 10, I hope you got at least a little inspired or motivated reading through them. But wait, there's more! I wanted to add a quote by Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB) to the list, but I could not decide on which one... so, here is a bonus list of my top 5 HCB quotes.
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst"
"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept."
"It is an illusion that photos are made with a camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head."
"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event." (The decisive moment.)
"The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera."
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