Zitat des Tages von Sam Abell:
I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.
It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.
Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.
For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.
Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest - a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.
Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.
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.
My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.
A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
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.
'Woman on the Plaza,' with its distinct horizon, snow-like surfaces, wintry wall, stunning sunlight, sharp shadows, and hurrying figure, would become the most biographical of my photographs - an abstract image of the landscape and life of northern Ohio where I grew up and first practiced photography.
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.
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.
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.
There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn't good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.
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.
