Born in 1902, well-known photographer Ansel Adams, an environmental enthusiast from San Francisco, experienced early hardships including a family financial downfall and a severe earthquake injury.
Adams was pivotal in 20th-century American landscape photography, passionately capturing the untouched beauty of national parks.
His top-notch efforts in co-founding Group f/64 and publishing venture Aperture, promoted “higher” photography, emphasizing crisp, focused images and fine art appreciation.
Adams, also an author provided invaluable technical insight through publications and developed the innovative “Zone System” with Fred Archer, enhancing pre-visualization techniques for photographers.
His legacy lives through his iconic images, instructional contributions and enduring commitment to nature and artistry.
Here is a list of the top curated quotes by Ansel Adams that you might like.
Top 10 Ansel Adams Quotes
Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real. ~ Ansel Adams.
Bad weather makes for good photography. ~ Ansel Adams.
It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument. ~ Ansel Adams.
A good photograph is knowing where to stand. ~ Ansel Adams.
A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels. ~ Ansel Adams.
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~ Ansel Adams.
Once destroyed, nature’s beauty cannot be repurchased at any price. ~ Ansel Adams.
Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art. ~ Ansel Adams.
If you have enough craft, you’ve done your homework and you’re practiced. You can then make the photograph you desire. ~ Ansel Adams.
The negative is the score, and the print the performance. ~ Ansel Adams.
Ansel Adams Quotes on Photography
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.
My last word is that it all depends on what you visualize. ~ Ansel Adams.
The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good. ~ Ansel Adams.
In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration. ~ Ansel Adams.
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. ~ Ansel Adams.
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.
I usually have an immediate recognition of the potential image, and I have found that too much concern about matters such as conventional composition may take the edge off the first inclusive reaction. ~ Ansel Adams.
In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration. ~ Ansel Adams.
I can’t verbalize the internal meaning of pictures whatsoever. Some of my friends can at very mystical levels, but I prefer to say that, if I feel something strongly, I would make a photograph, that would be the equivalent of what I saw and felt. ~ Ansel Adams.
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. ~ Ansel Adams.
The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet. ~ Ansel Adams.
Famous Ansel Adams Quotes
I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate. ~ Ansel Adams.
The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster. ~ Ansel Adams.
If what I see in my mind excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. ~ Ansel Adams.
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.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. ~ Ansel Adams.
Popular Ansel Adams Quotes
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. ~ Ansel Adams.
Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. ~ Ansel Adams.
Knowing what I know now, any photographer worth his salt could make some beautiful things with pinhole cameras. ~ Ansel Adams.
No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit. ~ Ansel Adams.
The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways. ~ Ansel Adams.
It is all very beautiful and magical here – a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake into you. ~ Ansel Adams.
All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation. ~ Ansel Adams.
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. ~ Ansel Adams.
Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment. ~ Ansel Adams.
The great rocks of Yosemite, expressing qualities of timeless yet intimate grandeur, are the most compelling formations of their kind. We should not casually pass them by, for they are the very heart of the earth speaking to us. ~ Ansel Adams.
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. ~ Ansel Adams.
Best Ansel Adams Quotes
The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro. ~ Ansel Adams.
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~ Ansel Adams.
Don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is. ~ Ansel Adams.
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. ~ Ansel Adams.
Notebook. No photographer should be without one! ~ Ansel Adams.
A photograph is not an accident – is a concept. It exists at, or before, the moment of exposure of the negative. ~ Ansel Adams.
Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships. ~ Ansel Adams.
To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer. ~ Ansel Adams.
I tried to keep both arts alive, but the camera won. I found that while the camera does not express the soul, perhaps a photograph can! ~ Ansel Adams.
Insightful Ansel Adams Quotes
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. ~ Ansel Adams.
I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music. ~ Ansel Adams.
I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful – an endless prospect of magic and wonder. ~ Ansel Adams.
The best picture is around the corner. Like prosperity. ~ Ansel Adams.
I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. ~ Ansel Adams.
Art is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. ~ Ansel Adams.
We make images to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. ~ Ansel Adams.
Ask yourself: “Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? ~ Ansel Adams.
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.
Ansel Adams Quotes for Photographers
Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique – these, too, are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation. ~ Ansel Adams.
The piano has eighty-eight keys, and you have to be able to play all of them. And the range of white to black is analogous to the eighty-eight keys and you have to be able to play all eighty-eight keys in that palette from white to black. ~ Ansel Adams.
One of the most important pieces of equipment, for the photographer who really wants to improve, is a great big wastepaper basket. ~ Ansel Adams.
The craft of photography is the key to good images. ~ Ansel Adams.
It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators. ~ Ansel Adams.
The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature. ~ Ansel Adams.
We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through fabric of illusion. ~ Ansel Adams.
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.
I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite. ~ Ansel Adams.
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.
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.
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.
A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. ~ Ansel Adams.
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. ~ Ansel Adams.
Emphasis on technique is justified only so far as it will simplify and clarify the statement of the photographer’s concept. ~ Ansel Adams.
A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into. ~ Ansel Adams.
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. ~ Ansel Adams.
Photography Quotes by Ansel Adams
Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. ~ Ansel Adams.
I believe photography is a tool to express our positive assessment of the world. A tool to acquire ultimate happiness and belief. ~ Ansel Adams.
The only things in my life that compatibly exists with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit. ~ Ansel Adams.
The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! ~ Ansel Adams.
Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs. ~ Ansel Adams.
Photograph not only what you see but also what you feel. ~ Ansel Adams.
You don’t take a photograph, you make it. ~ Ansel Adams.
Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum. ~ Ansel Adams.
A photograph is not an accident – it is a concept. ~ Ansel Adams.
The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance. ~ Ansel Adams.
So these were the 87 famous quotes about Ansel Adams.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Benito Mussolini quotes and Billie Eilish quotes.
