Ansel Adams Quotes about Photography

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.

A good photograph is knowing where to stand.

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

Bad weather makes for good photography.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!

The negative is the score, and the print the performance.

We make images to "honor what is greater and more interesting than we are."

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

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

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.

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

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

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.

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

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

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

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

Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.

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