Sam Abell Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#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. To strip failure of its real emotional consequences is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important - toughness, doggedness, and perseverance.

Brene Brown

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

Sam Abell

#7. 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

#8. You can do films for the fun of it, or the thrill of it, but certain films you can't do unless there's something driving you, something you have a passion for that will pull you through.

Truman Capote

#9. 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

#10. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how long a person had to live, or how good she had to be, to get her hands on some treasure.

Haven Kimmel

#11. I owe her everything and I love her and I tell her these days, although every time I say it, it gets a little diluted. I think you run out of I love yous.

Ned Vizzini

#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. She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof.

David Foster Wallace

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

Sam Abell

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. If you train worst case scenarios consistently, they will no longer be worst case scenarios

Rener Gracie

#21. 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

#22. Stephen Schlesinger's Act of Creation tells a dazzling story of the dramatic events that have shaped the world in which we live. Never has a book been more relevant to present dangers and future hopes.

James Chace

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

Sam Abell

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

Sam Abell

#25. Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.

Daryl Hall

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

Sam Abell

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. I love to read books. I love to read anything really, even the back of the cereal box.

But there is nothing that will ignite your soul like reading God's Word.

Rachel Wojnarowski

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

Sam Abell

#31. 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

#32. 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

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

Sam Abell

#34. Don't idolize me, idolize yourself.

Lady Gaga

#35. 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

#36. It's hard being bisexual, omnisexual, multisexual, whatever you want to call it, when people have their agenda and expect you to just represent their agenda.

Meshell Ndegeocello

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

Sam Abell

#38. LADY ANNE:
What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid?
Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal,
And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil. -

William Shakespeare

#39. 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

#40. 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