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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

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Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Photography
Workshop
Career
Workshops
Careers
Keen
Late
Continued
Since
Consistently
Came
Photographer
Think
Kept
Thinking
Honestly
Geographic

More quotes by Sam Abell

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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
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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
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I was giving a lecture and I said, that's enough about The Photographic Life, meaning my biography, now let's talk about the life of a photograph. And in that one instant I got the title for a potential next book.
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Teaching has never been far from my life. It's the most natural thing I do. Apparently, as I said, I cannot not do it.
Sam Abell
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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
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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
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Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.
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Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
Sam Abell
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It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.
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How the visual world appears is important to me. I'm always aware of the light. I'm always aware of what I would call the 'deep composition.' Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it's an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.
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Aboriginal Australia is a tough place to work, rough and tough.
Sam Abell
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That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called Your photographs: Better.
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My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.
Sam Abell
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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.
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When assignments were over, photography continued. One of the primary reasons it did was that I wanted and needed to have fresh work. Also, it's very stimulating to be around non-professional photographers. They're the ones with the purest flame burning about their photography. I appreciate that.
Sam Abell
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There isn't an aspect of book creation I don't enjoy, and there has always been a book in my life to dream about or work on.
Sam Abell
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Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.
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What I'm interested in is modern American history. I'm taken with the changes that have occurred in America in my lifetime.
Sam Abell
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For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.
Sam Abell
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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