Top 70 Jay Maisel Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The best camera is the one you have with you.”

— Jay Maisel

Featured in: Common Sense Quotes, Photography Quotes

2. “There is no one solution to all problems. It’s the problem itself that can lead to the solution.”

— Jay Maisel

3. “If you’re not your own severest critic, you are your own worst enemy.”

— Jay Maisel

4. “You need minimum color for maximum effect.”

— Jay Maisel

5. “If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.”

— Jay Maisel

6. “You have to pick the right tool for the point you’re trying to make and there is no one solution.”

— Jay Maisel

7. “As people, we love pattern. But interrupted pattern is more interesting.”

— Jay Maisel

8. “If you can capture the element of surprise, you’re way ahead of the game.”

— Jay Maisel

9. “Failing is not a problem. Not trying is a problem.”

— Jay Maisel

10. “It’s always around. You just don’t see it.”

— Jay Maisel

11. “Always carry a camera, it’s tough to shoot a picture without one.”

— Jay Maisel

12. “Sometimes as you work, you find that you are learning things about your own perceptions and motivations that are way below you consciousness. If you get lucky, you recognize what you are doing, but all too often we don’t find the connection between our work and our own motivations.”

— Jay Maisel

13. “I love when pictures ask questions or make others ask questions.”

— Jay Maisel

14. “Be aware of every square millimeter of your frame.”

— Jay Maisel

15. “Don’t overthink things in front of you. I fit moves you, shoot it. If it’s fun, shoot it. If you’ve never seen it before, shoot it.”

— Jay Maisel

16. “Light gesture and color of the key compliments of any photograph. Light and color are obvious, but it is just her that is the most important. There is gesture in everything. It’s up to you to find a gesture that is most telling.”

— Jay Maisel

17. “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

18. “Keep your mind open. You may very well learn something new about yourself and your pictures.”

— Jay Maisel

19. “Some have said that if you take a great picture in color and take away the color, you’ll have a great black-and-white picture. But if you’re shooting something about color and you take away the color, you’ll have nothing.”

— Jay Maisel

20. “We have always wanted to find the ‘it-ness’ of anything we shoot. We want to get as deep into the subject as we can.”

— Jay Maisel

21. “Sometimes without shooting a picture germinates in your head. Other times, you keep taking pictures of the same thing and watch the images mature and grow.”

— Jay Maisel

22. “The whole world is there for you. Gifts will happen, but only if you are patient with life itself, the shooting process, and your own limitations.”

— Jay Maisel

23. “The drama of light exists not only in what is in the light, but also in what is left dark. If the light is everywhere, the drama is gone.”

— Jay Maisel

24. “Always wait for the trigger. The trigger is the final part of the puzzle, the reason you want to shoot.”

— Jay Maisel

25. “If the light is great in front of you, you should turn around and see what it is doing behind you.”

— Jay Maisel

26. “I’m a New Yorker. I don’t believe in air unless I can see it.”

— Jay Maisel

27. “It’s a lot easier to take pictures if you always have the camera with you.”

— Jay Maisel

28. “There are rules about perception, but not about photography.”

— Jay Maisel

29. “I take pictures, and they are there for the taking. I’ll tell you a quote that I have always thought about. Arthur Miller said, I try to create the poem from the evidence.”

— Jay Maisel

30. “There really isn’t anything that you could call ‘bad’ color. It all has to do with the amount of color you use and in what context it appears.”

— Jay Maisel

31. “Money and fame that photography can bring you are wonderful, but nothing can compare to the joy of seeing something new.”

— Jay Maisel

32. “It’s important to realize that the images are everywhere, not just where you want or expect them to be.”

— Jay Maisel

33. “There is no bad light. There is spectacular light and difficult light. It’s up to you to use the light you have.”

— Jay Maisel

34. “If you’re not shooting in the right direction, it doesn’t matter how well you’re shooting.”

— Jay Maisel

35. “Color is seductive. It changes as it interacts with other colors, it changes because of the light falling upon it, and it changes as it becomes larger in size.”

— Jay Maisel

36. “Photography is an act of love.”

— Jay Maisel

37. “The more light you have in an image, the less drama you get. The details start taking over; the mystery is all gone.”

— Jay Maisel

38. “What you’re shooting at doesn’t matter, the real question is: ‘Does it give you joy?’”

— Jay Maisel

39. “First, perseverance trumps talent. Second, do what you want to do, otherwise why bother? Third, be ethical; it might rub off on others. Fourth, don’t give up.”

— Jay Maisel

40. “A photographer’s art is more in his perceptions than his execution. In a painter, I think the perception is only the first step, and then you have a kind of hard road of execution.”

— Jay Maisel

41. “Always shoot it now. It won’t be the same when you go back.”

— Jay Maisel

42. “You see shape, and how the light hits things, how the color changes from one end of the photo to the other, and how movement affects the mood of the photo.”

— Jay Maisel

43. “One color alone means nothing. I acts as in a vacuum, with no other colors to relate to. It is only when colors relate to other colors that the fun begins.”

— Jay Maisel

44. “You can’t just turn on when something happens, you have to be turned on all the time. Then things happen.”

— Jay Maisel

45. “We don’t experience light, color, and gesture in a vacuum. We experience it in contexts.”

— Jay Maisel

46. “It’s my obligation to take out all the ‘wrong’ pictures.”

— Jay Maisel

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

— Jay Maisel

48. “Gesture is not always action.”

— Jay Maisel

49. “You must not think of yourself as looking at the stage from the audience. You must think of it as theatre in the round and look at it from all sides.”

— Jay Maisel

50. “Pain is not a conduit to art or joy.”

— Jay Maisel