Quotes from Giants # 2

Ansel Adams

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A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.


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


Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

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

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

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.

The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.


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Henri Cartier Bresson

The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

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Dorothea Lange

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

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Eudora Welty


A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

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Mary Ellen Mark

I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul.

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