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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.

Sam Abell

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Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Thing
Quick
Think
Atmosphere
Thinking
Generally
Fast
Slowed
Photography
Thoughtless
Approach
Automatic
Interest
Workshops
Process
Thoughtful

More quotes by Sam Abell

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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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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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
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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
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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's a great quote about Virginia Woolf, she had the same spiritual stake in her diaries as she had in her writing.
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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Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.
Sam Abell
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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.
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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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.
Sam Abell
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My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.
Sam Abell
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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.
Sam Abell
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The unusual wins out over the usual.
Sam Abell
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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.
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.
Sam Abell