Best 122 quotes of Ansel Adams on MyQuotes

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels...

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

All art is the expression of one and the same thing- the relation of the spirit of man to the spirit of other men and to the world.

All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, “here it is.

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

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

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.

Art is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit.

Art is both the taking and giving of beauty; the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the inter-relations of these.

Ask yourself, 'Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning?' Remember: Every coincidence is potentially meaningful.

As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.

At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been visionary in his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both in film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature's monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans.

A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.

Bad weather makes for good photography.

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.

Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and wonder surrounding him.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

Emphasis on technique is justified only so far as it will simplify and clarify the statement of the photographer's concept.

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 Id say that would be very handsome. They would be almost as close as the best reproductions.

How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world. Photography can teach you to improve your awareness level.

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!

I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop.

I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.

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

I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.

I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.

I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music.

I can't verbalize the internal meaning of pictures whatsoever. Some of my friends can at very mystical levels, but I prefer to say that, if I feel something strongly, I would make a photograph, that would be the equivalent of what I saw and felt.

I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

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.

I expect to retire to a fine-grained heaven where the temperatures are always consistent, where the images slide before one's eyes in a continual cascade of form and meaning.

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

I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. Intuition, suspicion, or confidence in new ventures; there is a strange strain within me when advantage is not taken of some situation, the immediacy of recognition of the rightness or wrongness of a mood, a response, a decision - they are so often valid that I am increasingly convinced that we have yet to grasp the reality of existence.

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.

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.

I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.

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.

I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds.

I know the importance of highly trained awareness of the “moment” and the immediate and intuitive response of the photographer. It should be obvious to all that photographers whose images possess character and quality have attained them only by continued practice and total dedication to the medium.

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.

Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique - these, too, are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation .

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

I never know in advance what I will photograph,...I Go Out into the World and Hope I Will come across something that Imperatively interests me. I Am Addicted to the Found object. I have No doubt that I Will Continue to make Photographs till my last Breath.

In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular... sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.

I respect everything in change and the solemn beauty of life and death... and therefore, while man is amidst the immense beauty of objective bodies, he must possess the capacity of self-perfection and must observe and represent his world with full confidence.

I think we can not categorize. Things do not fit into a mold.

It is all very beautiful and magical here - a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake into you.

It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.

It is increasingly clear to me that my art relates more and more to a sublimation of my closeness to the natural world, it's events, light itself, and the positive it is a personal expression based on observation and reaction, that I am not able to define except in terms of the work itself.

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.