Ansel Adams Famous Quotes
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"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?""
To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.
This profession [photography] is deserving of attention and respect equal to that accorded painting, literature, music and architecture.
We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people ... The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere.
I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.
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.
My last word s that it all depends on what you visualize.
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.
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 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.
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.
The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
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.
Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.
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.
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.
You don't take a picture, you make a picture.
Emphasis on technique is justified only so far as it will simplify and clarify the statement of the photographer's concept.
The craft of photography is the key to good images.
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.
The best picture is around the corner. Like prosperity.
Let us leave a splendid legacy for our children ... let us turn to them and say, this you inherit: guard it well, for it is far more precious than money ... and once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ask yourself, 'Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning?' Remember: Every coincidence is potentially meaningful.
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.
It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.
I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music.
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.
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.
The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature.
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.
Knowing what I know now, any photographer worth his salt could make some beautiful things with pinhole cameras.
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 believe photography is a tool to express our positive assessment of the world. A tool to acquire ultimate happiness and belief.
The only things in my life that compatibly exists with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.
I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.
A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into.
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.
A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.
The term accessories has come to include a host of photographic gadgets of questionable value ...
The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.
Wilderness is rapidly becoming one of those aspects of the American dream which is more of the past than of the present. Wilderness is not only a condition of nature, but a state of mind and mood and heart. It cannot be confined to the museum-case status - seen only as a passing diorama from superlative throughways.
I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.
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.
How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world. Photography can teach you to improve your awareness level.
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
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.
To visualize an image (in whole or in part) is to see clearly in the mind prior to exposure, a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print.
Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter.
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.
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.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
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.
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.
The (photographic) negative is the equivalent of the composers score and the print is the equivalent of the conductors performance.
Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.
Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.
Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.
The next time you pick up a camera think of it not as an inflexible and automated robot, but as a flexible instrument which you must understand to properly use. An electronic and optical miracle creates nothing on its own! Whatever beauty and excitement it can represent exist in your mind and spirit to begin with.
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.
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.
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.
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration.
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.
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.
We observe few objects really closely. As we walk on the earth, we observe the external events at two or three arms' lengths. If we ride a horse or drive in an automobile, we are further separated from the immediate surround. We see and photograph "scenery"; our vast world is inadequately described as the "landscape." The most intimate object perceived daily is usually the printed page. The small and commonplace are rarely explored.
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.
I can't verbalize the internal meaning of pictures whatsoever. Some of my friends can at very mystical levels, but I prefer to say that, if I feel something strongly, I would make a photograph, that would be the equivalent of what I saw and felt.
Photograph not only what you see but also what you feel.
The camera cannot, but the photographer can.
We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through fabric of illusion.
Notebook. No photographer should be without one!
All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation.
You don't take a photograph, you make it.
The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.
Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique - these, too, are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation .
I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.
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.
Bad weather makes for good photography.
The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet.
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.
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.
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!
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.
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.
Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.
Wilderness, or wildness is a mystique. A religion, an intense philosophy, a dream of ideal society - these are also mystique. We are not engaged in preserving so many acre-feet of water, so many board-feet of timber, so many billion tons of granite, so many profit possibilities in so many ways for those concerned with the material aspects of the world. Yet, we must accept the fact that human life (at least in the metabolic sense) depends upon the resources of the Earth. 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.
From a speech to The Wilderness Society, May 9 1980