Quotes from Ansel Adams

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

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

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?

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop

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.

Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.

score, and the print the 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.

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

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.

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

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

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

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.

A good photograph is knowing where to stand.

A photograph is usually looked at — seldom looked into.

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

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.

Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.

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 then a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

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

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.

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