190 Quotes by Ansel Adams

Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?

The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.

We either have wild places or we don't. We admit the spiritual-emotional validity of wild, beautiful places or we don't. We have a philosophy of simplicity of experience in these wild places or we don't. We admit an almost religious devotion to the clean exposition of the wild, natural earth or we don't.

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

Wilderness is rapidly becoming one of those aspects of the American dream which is more of the past than of the present. Wilderness is not only a condition of nature, but a state of mind and mood and heart. It cannot be confined to the museum-case status—seen only as a passing diorama from superlative throughways.

Ask yourself, 'Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning?' Remember: Every coincidence is potentially meaningful.

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces.

In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration.

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