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Ansel Adams Quotes

Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist. His black and white landscape photographs of the American West, especially Yosemite National Park, have been widely reproduced on calendars, posters, books, and the internet.

Adams and Fred Archer developed the Zone System as a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. The resulting clarity and depth characterized his photographs. He primarily used large-format cameras because the large film used with these cameras contributed to sharpness in his prints.

Adams founded the photography group known as Group f/64, along with fellow photographers Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston.

✵ 20. February 1902 – 22. April 1984
Ansel Adams photo

Works

The Negative
Ansel Adams
The Negative
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams: 29 quotes14 likes

Famous 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.”

Ansel Adams

Context: I would never apologize for photographing rocks. Rocks can be very beautiful. But, yes, people have asked why I don’t put people into my pictures of the natural scene. I respond, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” That usually doesn’t go over at all.

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

“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

Ansel Adams Quotes about reason

“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

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

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

Ansel Adams

“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.")”

Ansel Adams

“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.”

Ansel Adams

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

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

Ansel Adams

Paraphrased as "Film is the score and the print is the performance."
Sheff
David
May 1983
Playboy
http://davidsheff.com/article/ansel-adams/
Playboy Interview: Ansel Adams
226

Ansel Adams Quotes about life

“Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.”

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985)

Ansel Adams Quotes

“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.”

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

Sheff
David
May 1983
Playboy
http://davidsheff.com/article/ansel-adams/
Playboy Interview: Ansel Adams
226

“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.”

Ansel Adams

Interview with Paul Hill (March 1975), published in P. Hill & T.J. Cooper (1979), Dialogue with Photography

“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.”

Ansel Adams book The Negative

The Negative (1981), introduction to second edition

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

Ansel Adams

Attributed to Adams in: AB bookman's weekly: for the specialist book world. (1985) Vol 76, Nr. 19-27; p. 3326

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

Ansel Adams

Attributed to Adams in E.T. Schoch (2002), The Everything Digital Photography Book (2002) p. 105

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

Ansel Adams

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

Ansel Adams

Radio interview, 1972

“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.”

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985)

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

Ansel Adams

Sheff
David
May 1983
Playboy
http://davidsheff.com/article/ansel-adams/
Playboy Interview: Ansel Adams
226

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