To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.
One of the most important pieces of equipment, for the photographer who really wants to improve, is a great big wastepaper basket.
The camera cannot, but the photographer can.
With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.
I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.
I expect to retire to a fine-grained heaven where the temperatures are always consistent, where the images slide before one’s eyes in a continual cascade of form and meaning.
It is just as important to bring people the evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a document of ugliness, squalor, and despair.
The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good.
A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels.
We make images to “honor what is greater and more interesting than we are.”
A photograph is not an accident – is a concept. It exists at, or before, the moment of exposure of the negative.
Bad weather makes for good photography.
The great rocks of Yosemite, expressing qualities of timeless yet intimate grandeur, are the most compelling formations of their kind. We should not casually pass them by, for they are the very heart of the earth speaking to us.
I am always surprised when I see several cameras, a gaggle on lenses, filters, meters, et cetera, rattling around in a soft bag with a complement of refuse and dust. Sometimes the professional is the worst offender!
I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.
My wife – she could help me get the negs out!
Emphasis on technique is justified only so far as it will simplify and clarify the statement of the photographer’s concept.
My last word s that it all depends on what you visualize.
Every experience is a form of exploration.
It is all very beautiful and magical here – a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake it into you. The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro, where everything is sidewise under you and over you, and the clocks stopped long ago.
We observe few objects really closely. As we walk on the earth, we observe the external events at two or three arms’ lengths. If we ride a horse or drive in an automobile, we are further separated from the immediate surround. We see and photograph “scenery”; our vast world is inadequately described as the “landscape.” The most intimate object perceived daily is usually the printed page. The small and commonplace are rarely explored.