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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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Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Taken
Telephones
Future
Engineers
Anything
Photographs
Back
Weren
Able
Management
Would
Photograph
Kodak
Late
Consultant
Told
Consultants

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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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.
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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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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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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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My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.
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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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Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
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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.
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First of all, I appropriate photographs.In presenting the Richard Prince photograph I tried to be as neutral as I could be. I put down the fact of it. I wanted it to be the same thing he wanted it to be, an open ended invitation to think about authorship, and who owns a created work. So I pair it with my appropriated picture.
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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.
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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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That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called Your photographs: Better.
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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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
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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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A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
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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.
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I'm interested in smokers standing on ledges, and big box stores, the rise of the suburbs, and the hollowing out of small towns. Self-storage. Things that didn't exist 50 years ago. Our common culture. What we have agreed is OK to live with.
Sam Abell