Abell Quotes

#1. Cauthon lives," Arganda said. "And that's bloody amazing, considering that someone blew up his command post, set fire to his tenet, killed a bunch of his damane, and chased off his wife. Cauthon crawled out of it somehow."
"Ha!" Abell Cauthon said. "That's my boy.

Robert Jordan

#2. My father taught me photography. It was his hobby, and we had a small darkroom in the fruit cellar of our basement. It was the kind of makeshift darkroom that was only dark at night.

Sam Abell

#3. Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

Sam Abell

#4. The neatest part of this book I'm working on - to me - are the pictures that show the process ... Because photographers ... think things through and ... it isn't luck, and it isn't random and it isn't accidental. It isn't.

Sam Abell

#5. Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

Sam Abell

#6. Actually, ambition won't get you that far. You'll shift gears. You'll see something that's shinier. But if you believe ... then you're the long-distance runner.

Sam Abell

#7. You know not what you are capable of doing; you cannot sound the ocean of thought within you. You must labor, keep at it, and dig deep and long before you will begin to realize much. Be inactive - mourn because you were not created a giant in intellect, and you will die a fool.

L.G. Abell

#8. A more glorious victory cannot be gained over another than this, that when the injury began on his part, the kindness begins on ours.

L.G. Abell

#9. An ordinary intellect will, by industry and perseverance, often accomplish more than a much superior one, deficient in energy and the power of endurance.

L.G. Abell

#10. As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.

Sam Abell

#11. There isn't an aspect of book creation I don't enjoy, and there has always been a book in my life to dream about or work on.

Sam Abell

#12. Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest - a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.

Sam Abell

#13. Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

Sam Abell

#14. The unusual wins out over the usual.

Sam Abell

#15. My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

Sam Abell

#16. How the visual world appears is important to me. I'm always aware of the light. I'm always aware of what I would call the 'deep composition.' Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it's an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.

Sam Abell

#17. I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.

Sam Abell

#18. I had luck, but I worked hard and I suffered. It's not just photography I'm talking about. It's about whatever dream you want it to be.

Sam Abell

#19. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make.

Sam Abell

#20. Just like some people's instinct to photograph is triggered by vacation ... assignments might be that to me and that's why I've built my life around assignments. That was the way to live the photographic life.

Sam Abell

#21. The deepest wretchedness often results from a perpetual continuation of petty trials.

L.G. Abell

#22. I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.

Sam Abell

#23. Tears had been slipping through the cracks every five or six steps on the trail, and now the latch had burst - hidden cries from the man, buried cries from the son, and honest cries from the little boy all poured from my surrender.

Ed Abell

#24. I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.

Sam Abell

#25. It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.

Sam Abell

#26. Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.

Sam Abell

#27. There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn't good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.

Sam Abell

#28. Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.

Sam Abell

#29. My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.

Sam Abell

#30. When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.

Sam Abell

#31. A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

Sam Abell

#32. The best lesson I was given is that all of life teaches, especially if we have that expectation.

Sam Abell

#33. For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.

Sam Abell

#34. In almost every photograph I have ever made, there is something I would do to complete it. I take that to be the spirit hole or the deliberate mistake that's in a Navajo rug to not be godlike, but to be human.

Sam Abell