Top 11 Ansel Adams Quotes

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

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

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

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.

Yes, in the sense that the negative is like the composer’s score. Then, using that musical analogy, the print is the performance. (Paraphrased as "Film is the score and the print is the performance.")

I would never apologize for photographing rocks. Rocks can be very beautiful. But, yes, people have asked why I don’t put people into my pictures of the natural scene. I respond, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” That usually doesn’t go over at all.

If what I see in my mind excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph.

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

I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them.

For me the future of the image is going to be in electronic form. … You will see perfectly beautiful images on an electronic screen. And I'd say that would be very handsome. They would be almost as close as the best reproductions.

The herculean task of a photographer is to capture a momentary frame as beautiful in reality, as it would be in a dream.