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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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Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Anyone
Dorms
Think
Kentucky
Thinking
Camera
Cameras
University
College
Example
Came
Dorm

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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There's a great quote about Virginia Woolf, she had the same spiritual stake in her diaries as she had in her writing.
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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.
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My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky.
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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.
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My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.
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A very big part of the life of a photograph is the afterlife.
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Though Geographic didn't publish that photo in the story that it was done for, The Life of Charlie Russell, a cowboy artist in Montana. But later, maybe a year and a half ago, they named it one of the 50 greatest pictures ever made at National Geographic.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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My father taught me photography. It was his hobby, and we had a small darkroom in the fruit cellar of our basement. It was the kind of makeshift darkroom that was only dark at night.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
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A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
Sam Abell