Ansel Adams

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

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

A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships, when there's too much sky or too little sky.

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

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

To photograph truthfully and effectively, is to see beneath the surface.

The negative is the score, and the print is the performance.

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

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

I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future.

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

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.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

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.

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

The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask.

Art is both an imitation of nature and an extension of nature.

My life is a search for the beautiful. I am a photographer, and I am a musician. I am a lover of nature, and I am a lover of people.