Photography Ethics Quotes

To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have.

You can go into all sorts of situations with a camera and people will think they should serve it.

Never ever say the word shoot when you are taking a picture with a camera because a camera is not a violent weapon.

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity.

I feel like some women do get away with doing these sexy shoots and looking like they're being really empowered. For me, I'd feel really uncomfortable in that situation and a bit like I was being taken advantage of.

Photography is, by its nature, exploitative. It's whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not. I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.

We have become a nation of Kodachrome, Nikon, Instamatic addicts. But we haven't yet developed a clear idea of the ethics of picture-taking. ... Where do we get the right to bring other people home in a canister? Where did we lose the right to control our image?

If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, "Don't film me anymore," [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them; he just respected their wishes.

Today, the paparazzi are not just photographers: everyone has a cell phone with a camera. If they see an actor, they click pictures to show it to their friends or have it on their phones and, as an actor, I don't see anything wrong with it. Having said that, there is a limit that has been crossed, but there is nothing right or wrong.

A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view.

Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.

A camera is wild in just about anybody's hands, therefore one must set limits. But cameras have a life of their own. Cameras care nothing about cults or isms. They are indifferent mechanical eyes, ready to devour anything in sight. They are lenses of the unlimited reproduction.

As a photographer, there are times when I have to decide if it's appropriate to invade a moment with my camera.

It is a little weird seeing photographs from parties where you didn't even know a photographer was there.

And no photographs taken with the aid of flashlight either, if only out of respect of the actual light—even when there isn't any of it.

I've made over 250 pictures and have never shot a guy in the back. Change it.

It's just a matter of who you are and how you talk to people. Your subjects will trust you only if you're confident about what you're doing. It really bothers me when photographers first approach a subject without a camera, try to establish a personal relationship, and only then get out their cameras. It's deceptive. I think you should just show up with a camera, to make your intentions clear. People will either accept you or they won't.

I don't care what you do with that negative, you can retouch it, you can spit on it, you can grind it underfoot. The only thing that matters is if it is honest. If [the picture] is honest, you and everybody can tell. If it is dishonest, you and everybody can tell.

a likeness different from the products of the God-fearing photographer.

The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.

I was aware that people thought a certain type of photo work was either stealing, borrowing, copying or dumb.

Is giving in to the photographer's presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times?

Nothing wrong with retouching - nothing new about retouching.

A white woman with a camera in the Devadasi belt of Karnataka is not inconspicuous... it took time for these women to believe that I was not an official, carrying the threat of fine and imprisonment.

Today a lot of things are so celebrity-oriented; it's only because it's celebrity and the photograph is lost. To me it's important to have an image that is a photograph first, not about necessarily who that person is.