Ansel Adams Quotes

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

“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.”

“You don't take a photograph, you make it.”

“A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into.”

“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.”

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

“Yes, in the sense that the negative is like the composer’s score. Then, using that musical analogy, the print is the performance. (Paraphrased as "Film is the score and the print is the performance.")”

“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term — meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching — there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”

“Yes, in the sense that the negative is like the composer’s score. Then, using that musical analogy, the print is the performance.”

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

“The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.”

“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own Government to save the environment.”

“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!”

“For me the future of the image is going to be in electronic form. … You will see perfectly beautiful images on an electronic screen. And I'd say that would be very handsome. They would be almost as close as the best reproductions.”

“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.”

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

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”

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

“There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”

“Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.”

“There are two people in every photograph: the photographer and the viewer”

“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”

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

“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.”

“If what I see in my mind excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph.”