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Ansel Adams Quotes


The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.

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

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

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

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 is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

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.

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.

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

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.

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.

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

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

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