Quotes from Ansel Adams

With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.

The [35mm] camera is for life and for people, the swift and intense moments of life.

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.

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

We observe few objects really closely. As we walk on the earth, we observe the external events at two or three arms' lengths. If we ride a horse or drive in an automobile, we are further separated from the immediate surround. We see and photograph scenery; our vast world is inadequately described as the landscape. The most intimate object perceived daily is usually the printed page. The small and commonplace are rarely explored.

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

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.

For me it is most often an immediate reaction; the more I look for something, the less chance there is for finding anything of value.

I have often said that the negative is similar to a musician's score, and the print to the performance of that score. The negative comes to life only when performed as a print.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

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

One of the most important pieces of equipment, for the photographer who really wants to improve, is a great big wastepaper basket.

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

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.

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.

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.

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.