70+ Ansel Adams Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

The camera cannot, but the photographer can.
ANSEL ADAMS

Ability Camera Inspirational Photographer Possible
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.
ANSEL ADAMS

Believe Environment Life Myself
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.
ANSEL ADAMS

Image Mindset Photograph Visual
A photograph is not an accident – it is a concept.
ANSEL ADAMS

Accident Mistake Photograph
In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.
ANSEL ADAMS

Experience Exploration Life Photograph Time Wisdom
Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.
ANSEL ADAMS

God Myself Photograph Place
We make images to “honor what is greater and more interesting than we are.”
ANSEL ADAMS

Greatness Honor Image
The craft of photography is the key to good images.
ANSEL ADAMS

Goodness Image Keys Photograph
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.
ANSEL ADAMS

Beautiful Heart Love Myself Relationship Soul Spirit Stars World
With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.
ANSEL ADAMS

Art Experience Expression
Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.
ANSEL ADAMS

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

Myself Space Sunrise Wonder
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
ANSEL ADAMS

Inspirational People Photograph View
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.
ANSEL ADAMS

Nature Reveal Simplicity Wild
The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!
ANSEL ADAMS

Camera Important Photograph Technology
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.
ANSEL ADAMS

Beautiful Children Destroy Leaving Money Ourselves Price
One of the most important pieces of equipment, for the photographer who really wants to improve, is a great big wastepaper basket.
ANSEL ADAMS

Greatness Important Improvement Photograph Pieces
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied – it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
ANSEL ADAMS

Elegant Silence Talk Yourself
We were in the shadow of the mountains, the light was cool and quiet and no wind was stirring. The aspen trunks were slightly greenish and the leaves were a vibrant yellow.
ANSEL ADAMS

Leaving Light Nature Quiet
Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique – these, too, are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation .
ANSEL ADAMS

Art Design Enough Style Technique
You don’t make a photograph just with a camera
ANSEL ADAMS

Camera Photograph Yourself
The ‘machine-gun’ approach to photography – by which many negatives are made with the hope that one will be good – is fatal to serious results.
ANSEL ADAMS

Hope Negative Photograph Serious Weapon
As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.
ANSEL ADAMS

Emotion Emotional Existence Lake Sea Spiritual World
I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.
ANSEL ADAMS

Art Myself Need
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.
ANSEL ADAMS

Ability Photograph Possible Remember
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.
ANSEL ADAMS

Expression Imagination Limitation Person Photograph
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
ANSEL ADAMS

Camera Goodness Photograph Rule

Ansel Adams Quotes

Famous American photographers