Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Ansel Adams (American Photographer)

Ansel Easton Adams (1902–84) was an American landscape photographer and conservationist. He spent a large part of his career in commercial photography, but he is best known for his majestic black-and-white landscape photographs.

Born in San Francisco, Adams was a restless child who could not focus on his lessons. He originally trained as a pianist but became a professional photographer in 1927. His work is notable for his broad landscapes of untouched wilderness in the western U.S., especially of Yosemite National Park, California, in the 1930s.

Adams made significant contributions to the development of photographic techniques. He popularized the use of large-format cameras and small apertures to produce sharp images with a maximum depth of field—this was in sharp contrast to the soft-focus work of the time. With Edward Weston and other photographers, Adams started the Group 1/64 (1932) and helped found the department of photography at the New York Museum of Modern Art (1940.)

Adams established the photographic department of the California School of Fine Art in San Francisco. He was a prolific writer and lecturer, stressing the importance of image quality at every stage of a photographer’s work. He was also a conservationist and a director of the Sierra Club 1936–76.

Adams’s collections, My Camera in the National Parks (1950) and This Is the American Earth (1960,) reflect his interest in conservation. His other notable publications include Taos Pueblo (1930) and Born Free and Equal (1944.)

The American photographer and curator John Szarkowski compiled the reappraisal Ansel Adams at 100 (2001.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ansel Adams

To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

If photography were difficult in the true sense … 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.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

We who are gathered here may represent a particular delete, not of money and power, but of concern for the earth for the earth’s sake.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Wilderness

The term accessories has come to include a host of photographic gadgets of questionable value…
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

A photograph is usually looked at—seldom looked into.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: One liners, Photography

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Creation

Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Performance

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.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer—and often the supreme disappointment.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

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
Topics: Photography

You don’t take a photograph, you make it.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography, One liners

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

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.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

Notebook. No photographer should be without one
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Wildlife

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. The skies and the lands are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated into a glowing world between the macro and the micro, where everything is sidewise under you and over you, and the clocks stopped long ago.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Time

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
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Imagination, Photography

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Wisdom, Discovery

The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography, One liners

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!
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

A good photograph is knowing where to stand
—Ansel Adams
Topics: One liners, Photography

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

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?
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

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
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.
—Ansel Adams
Topics: Photography

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