Ansel Adams Quotes

#1. 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!

Ansel Adams

#2. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#4. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#7. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#9. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#11. 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.

Ansel Adams

#12. Bad weather makes for good photography.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#14. 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.

Ansel Adams

#15. 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.

Ansel Adams

#16. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#18. 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

#19. 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.

Ansel Adams

#20. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#22. A good photograph is knowing where to stand.

Ansel Adams

#23. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#26. 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.

Ansel Adams

#27. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#29. I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds.

Ansel Adams

#30. The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!

Ansel Adams

#31. 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.

Ansel Adams

#32. Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#34. 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

#35. I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.

Ansel Adams

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. The best picture is around the corner. Like prosperity.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#41. I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music.

Ansel Adams

#42. A photograph is not an accident - it is a concept.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#45. I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#47. 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

#48. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#50. Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique - these, too, are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation .

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#53. 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.

Ansel Adams

#54. 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

#55. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

Ansel Adams

#60. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#62. 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.

Ansel Adams

#63. 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.

Ansel Adams

#64. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#66. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#69. 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

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

Ansel Adams

#71. We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through fabric of illusion.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#73. 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.

Ansel Adams

#74. Notebook. No photographer should be without one!

Ansel Adams

#75. 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.

Ansel Adams

#76. 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.

Ansel Adams

#77. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#79. Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh, stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas.

Ansel Adams

#80. 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.

Ansel Adams

#81. 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

#82. 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

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

Ansel Adams

#84. 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.

Ansel Adams

#85. The craft of photography is the key to good images.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#90. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#92. A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#94. 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.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#96. 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.

Ansel Adams

#97. 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

#98. 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

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

Ansel Adams

#100. 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.

Ansel Adams