Quotes & Sayings About Photography Ansel Adams

It is just as important to bring people the evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a document of ugliness, squalor, and despair. — Ansel Adams

My work is my language and I don't discuss it very easily. It's difficult for me to verbalize my feelings, or to intellectualize my work. In fact, it used to annoy me when Ansel Adams and Paul Strand yak-yak-yakked about what photography meant, and I told them so. — Brett Weston

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. — Ansel Adams

This profession [photography] is deserving of attention and respect equal to that accorded painting, literature, music and architecture. — Ansel Adams

Black and white photography is truly quite a 'departure from reality', and the transition from one aspect of visual magic to another was not as complete as many imagine. — Ansel Adams

Notebook. No photographer should be without one! — Ansel Adams

I am always surprised when I see several cameras, a gaggle on lenses, filters, meters, et cetera, rattling around in a soft bag with a complement of refuse and dust. Sometimes the professional is the worst offender! — Ansel Adams

A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into. — Ansel Adams

To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer. — Ansel Adams

"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?"" — Ansel Adams

I am probably afraid that some spectator will not understand my photography - therefore I proceed to make it really less understandable by writing defensibly about it. — Ansel Adams

The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal. — John Dunning

Fine-art photography is a very small world associated with galleries, museums, and university art programs. It's not like rock music; the products of this world have never been widely seen because the artists are often exploring things that are not already coded in general consciousness. It's not that photographers don't want to be famous, it's just that very few of the views from the edges of culture make the mainstream. Ansel Adams was an exception. — Mark Klett

To the vast majority of people a photograph is an image of something within their direct experience: a more-or-less factual reality. It is difficult for them to realize that the photograph can be the source of experience, as well as the reflection of spiritual awareness of the world and of self. — Ansel Adams

All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation. — Ansel Adams

The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster. — Ansel Adams

I know some photographs that are extraodrinary in their power and conviction, but it is difficult in photography to overcome the superficial power or subject; the concept and statement must be quite convincing in themselves to win over a dramatic and compelling subject situation. — Ansel Adams

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! — Ansel Adams

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art. — Ansel Adams

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. — Ansel Adams

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs. — Ansel Adams

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. — Ansel Adams

A photograph is not an accident - it is a concept. — Ansel Adams

The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good. — Ansel Adams

You don't take a photograph, you make it. — Ansel Adams

In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration. — Ansel Adams

Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy-the tone range isn't right and things like that-but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention. — Elliott Erwitt

In 1979, I received a phone call from Ansel Adams asking me if I would be willing to consider coming to work for him. I was teaching photography in Southern California at that point. — John Sexton

It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium. — Ansel Adams

I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite. — Ansel Adams

Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real. — Ansel Adams

How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world. Photography can teach you to improve your awareness level. — Ansel Adams

We make images to "honor what is greater and more interesting than we are." — Ansel Adams

Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me. — William Eggleston

Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter. — Ansel Adams

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. — Ansel Adams

Good photography is not about Zone Printing or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It's just about seeing. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Nothing more. — Elliott Erwitt

I believe photography is a tool to express our positive assessment of the world. A tool to acquire ultimate happiness and belief. — Ansel Adams

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. — Ansel Adams

It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators. — Ansel Adams

Photography is an investigation of both the outer and the inner worlds. The first experiences with the camera involve looking at the world beyond the lens, trusting the instrument will 'capture' something 'seen.' The terms shoot and take are not accidental; they represent an attitude of conquest and appropriation. Only when the photographer grows into perception and creative impulse does the term make define a condition of empathy between the external and the internal events. — Ansel Adams

A photograph is not an accident - is a concept. It exists at, or before, the moment of exposure of the negative. — Ansel Adams

Image quality is not the product of a machine, but of the person who directs the machine, and there are no limits to imagination and expression. — Ansel Adams

I hope that my work will encourage self expression in others and stimulate the search for beauty and creative excitement in the great world around us. — Ansel Adams

One sees differently with color photography than black-and-white ... in short, visualization must be modified by the specific nature of the equipment and materials being used. — Ansel Adams

The term accessories has come to include a host of photographic gadgets of questionable value ... — Ansel Adams

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. — Ansel Adams

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety. — Ansel Adams

Bad weather makes for good photography. — Ansel Adams

The dismal half-baked images of the average "reportage" and "documentary" photography are self dammning ... the slick manner, the slightly obscure significance, the esoteric fear of simple beauty for its own sake - I am deeply concerned with these manifestations of decay. Gene Smith's work validates my most vigorous convictions that if the documentary photographs is to be truly effective it must contain elements of art, intensity, fine craft and spirituality. All these his work contains and we may turn to his work with gratitude, appreciation and great respect. — Ansel Adams

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment. — Ansel Adams

The craft of photography is the key to good images. — Ansel Adams