“A photograph is not an accident – is a concept. It exists at, or before, the moment of exposure of the negative.”

I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.

To visualize an image (in whole or in part) is to see clearly in the mind prior to exposure, a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print.

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

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

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

The craft of photography is the key to good images.

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

I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds.

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

Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.

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

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

Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh, stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas.

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

Let us leave a splendid legacy for our children…let us turn to them and say, this you inherit: guard it well, for it is far more precious than money…and once destroyed, nature’s beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.

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

Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. This is why all the world is a stage.

We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

When I go through the airport and see white women walking through the airport barefooted, like athlete’s feet don’t exist, there’s something wrong.

We must all learn a good lesson – how to live together. That is the new challenge of the new world, learning to co-exist and not co-annihilate.

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is, the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence.