Quote

It matters little how much equipment we use it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.

Sam Abell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Use
Littles
Little
Matter
Equipment
Much
Photographer
Matters
Photography
Masters

More quotes by Sam Abell

Image
I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.
Sam Abell
Image
That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called Your photographs: Better.
Sam Abell
Image
I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.
Sam Abell
Image
The class that I teach is called The Life of a Photograph. It takes up the question, of the billion photographs that were taken today, how many will have a life, and why? So the new reality has made the question more pertinent, not less pertinent.
Sam Abell
Image
My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.
Sam Abell
Image
As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.
Sam Abell
Image
I was a consultant for Kodak back in the late 80's. There were engineers there who told me that in the future, most photographs would be taken on telephones. They weren't able to do anything with that. They were engineers, not management.
Sam Abell
Image
I think that it's workshops, honestly, that have kept me keen about photography, and about my photography. My career as a workshop photographer came while I was at the Geographic in the late 70's, and has continued consistently since then.
Sam Abell
Image
When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.
Sam Abell
Image
There are grander and more sublime landscapes - to me. There are more compelling cultures. But what appeals to me about central Montana is that the combination of landscape and lifestyle is the most compelling I've seen on this earth. Small mountain ranges and open prairie, and different weather, different light, all within a 360-degree view.
Sam Abell
Image
Typically I see it with photographers who go to a place like India or Nepal, and everything's so colorful and exotic and they think, therefore, a picture's been taken.
Sam Abell
Image
My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.
Sam Abell
Image
For example, in my dorm, at the University of Kentucky, I had the only camera. I don't think anyone came to college with a camera, other than me.
Sam Abell
Image
The thing with my workshops is, photography is a thoughtful process. In an atmosphere of fast photography, and generally thoughtless, quick, automatic photography, I think that there is an interest in the slowed down, thoughtful approach.
Sam Abell
Image
A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
Sam Abell
Image
Aboriginal Australia is a tough place to work, rough and tough.
Sam Abell
Image
The neatest part of this book I'm working on - to me - are the pictures that show the process... Because photographers... think things through and... it isn't luck, and it isn't random and it isn't accidental. It isn't.
Sam Abell
Image
[ My time and our common culture] it's what I'm photographing, and I'm very involved with that.
Sam Abell
Image
I had a book come out several years ago, when there were no blogs. This is a mark to me about how the environment has changed.
Sam Abell
Image
There's a great quote about Virginia Woolf, she had the same spiritual stake in her diaries as she had in her writing.
Sam Abell