Ansel Adams

“There are no forms in nature. Nature is a vast, chaotic collection of shapes. You as an artist create configurations out of chaos. You make a formal statement where there was none to begin with. All art is a combination of an external event and an internal event… I make a photograph to give you the equivalent of what I felt. Equivalent is still the best word.”

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

“There are two people in every photograph: the photographer and the viewer”

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

“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.”

“I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.”

“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.”

“I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.”

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

“Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and wonder surrounding him.”

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

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

“A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into.”

“Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.”

“The whole world is, to me, very much "alive" - all the little growing things, even the rocks. I can't look at a swell bit of grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life - the things going on - within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood.”

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

“Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.”

“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.”

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