Ansel Adams Quotations

A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.

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

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

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium.

I tried to keep both arts alive, but the camera won. I found that while the camera does not express the soul, perhaps a photograph can!

A good photograph is knowing where to stand.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.

When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.

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

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

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

There are worlds of experience beyond the world of the aggressive man, beyond history, and beyond science. The moods and qualities of nature and the revelations of great art are equally difficult to define; we can grasp them only in the depths of our perceptive spirit.

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

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.

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

Some photographers take reality... and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation.

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.

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

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.

Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.

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

The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.

The only things in my life that compatibly exists with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.

These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.

In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular... sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.

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?

The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels.

Ask yourself, 'Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning?' Remember: Every coincidence is potentially meaningful.

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

I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.

All art is the expression of one and the same thing- the relation of the spirit of man to the spirit of other men and to the world.

I never know in advance what I will photograph,...I Go Out into the World and Hope I Will come across something that Imperatively interests me. I Am Addicted to the Found object. I have No doubt that I Will Continue to make Photographs till my last Breath.

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.

The best picture is around the corner. Like prosperity.

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

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.

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.

Bad weather makes for good photography.

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

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

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.

I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.

The [35mm] camera is for life and for people, the swift and intense moments of life.

We were in the shadow of the mountains, the light was cool and quiet and no wind was stirring. The aspen trunks were slightly greenish and the leaves were a vibrant yellow.

Photograph not only what you see but also what you feel.

Knowing what I know now, any photographer worth his salt could make some beautiful things with pinhole cameras.

You don't take a picture, you make a picture.

If you have enough craft, you've done your homework and you're practiced. You can then make the photograph you desire.

I know the importance of highly trained awareness of the “moment” and the immediate and intuitive response of the photographer. It should be obvious to all that photographers whose images possess character and quality have attained them only by continued practice and total dedication to the medium.

Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and wonder surrounding him.

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

As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.

While the photos at the D.M.V. (New York) will still be taken in color, the engraving is done in grayscale, hence the Ansel Adams feel.

The herculean task of a photographer is to capture a momentary frame as beautiful in reality, as it would be in a dream.

If what I see in my mind excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph.

My last word s that it all depends on what you visualize.

All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, “here it is.

The (photographic) negative is the equivalent of the composers score and the print is the equivalent of the conductors performance.

One of the most important pieces of equipment, for the photographer who really wants to improve, is a great big wastepaper basket.

The great rocks of Yosemite, expressing qualities of timeless yet intimate grandeur, are the most compelling formations of their kind. We should not casually pass them by, for they are the very heart of the earth speaking to us.

The camera cannot, but the photographer can.

The piano has eighty-eight keys, and you have to be able to play all of them. And the range of white to black is analogous to the eighty-eight keys and you have to be able to play all eighty-eight keys in that palette from white to black.

My wife - she could help me get the negs out!

The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro.

It is increasingly clear to me that my art relates more and more to a sublimation of my closeness to the natural world, it's events, light itself, and the positive it is a personal expression based on observation and reaction, that I am not able to define except in terms of the work itself.

Emphasis on technique is justified only so far as it will simplify and clarify the statement of the photographer's concept.

For me the future of the image is going to be in electronic form ... You will see perfectly beautiful images on an electronic screen. And Id say that would be very handsome. They would be almost as close as the best reproductions.

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!

I expect to retire to a fine-grained heaven where the temperatures are always consistent, where the images slide before one's eyes in a continual cascade of form and meaning.

At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been visionary in his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both in film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature's monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans.

There are no forms in nature. Nature is a vast, chaotic collection of shapes. You as an artist create configurations out of chaos. You make a formal statement where there was none to begin with. All art is a combination of an external event and an internal event… I make a photograph to give you the equivalent of what I felt. Equivalent is still the best word.

It is all very beautiful and magical here - a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake into you.

I’m interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.

We who are gathered here may represent a particular delete, not of money and power, but of concern for the earth for the earth's sake.

...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.

The disciples are drawn to the high altars with magnetic certainty, knowing that a great Presence hovers over the ranges ... You were within the portals of the temple ... to enter the wilderness and seek, in the primal patterns of nature, a magical union with beauty.

With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.

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.

No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied - it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

The negative is the score, and the print the performance.

I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them.

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

I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop.

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

I respect everything in change and the solemn beauty of life and death... and therefore, while man is amidst the immense beauty of objective bodies, he must possess the capacity of self-perfection and must observe and represent his world with full confidence.

The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature.

I usually have an immediate recognition of the potential image, and I have found that too much concern about matters such as conventional composition may take the edge off the first inclusive reaction.

I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.

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.