Ansel Adams
You don't take a photograph, you make it.
Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
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.
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.
Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.
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.
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.
There's nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.
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.
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.
Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.
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.
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?
Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.
Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.