Ansel Adams Photography Sayings

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#6. 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

#7. "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

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

Ansel Adams

#9. 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

#10. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#13. 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

#14. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#17. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#22. 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

#23. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#27. 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

#28. Bad weather makes for good photography.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#30. 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

#31. 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

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

Ansel Adams

#33. 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

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

Ansel Adams

#35. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

#45. 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

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

Ansel Adams

#47. Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams