Sam Abell Quotes

I'm much more about the emotion that a photograph provokes out of you and less about how technically brilliant it is.

I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.

I'm not a politician or a scholar or political historian. I'm just a photographer who's trying to capture a spirit. It's not an intellectual process; it's an intuitive process.

It's really the artist in me that loves the idea of an image and an image that provokes an emotion.

Photography is only a new road from a different direction, but moving toward the common goal, which is life.

Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything?

All my different kinds of artwork have been designed to inspire people to think. They may not always agree with me, but at least they will have some feelings and some passion about whatever it is.

I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.

In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.

You think you photograph a particular scene for the pleasure it gives. In fact it's the scene that wants to be photographed. You're merely an extra in the production.

The camera’s not a camera, really. It’s an open door we need to walk through. It’s up to us to keep moving our feet.

At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands before our camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect--a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

It was not until I was in my forties, in the fifth decade of my life, that the sense of place, the spirit of place, became of paramount importance to me. It was then that I began my travels, that I discovered, through photography, the quality of light, and that I gradually became able to paint the mood of place.

Great art would have 'head': it would have interesting intellectual ideas and concepts. It would have 'heart' in that it would have passion and heart and soul. And it would have 'hand' in that it would be greatly crafted.

I share something in common with Norman Rockwell and, for that matter, with Walt Disney, in that I really like to make people happy.

Being a photographer is like listening to music. If you have a camera, by just living your life you're bound to find some things that are worth taking a picture of. You don't have to be an audiophile to have taste in music. It happens through osmosis.

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.

Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself.

I like poems that inspire, that make us think and reflect. It's like putting love into the world for whoever picks it up.

In photo shoots, I rely on instinct. Which is not to say I don't bring ideas to a project or consider it beforehand.

As long as the world continues to be strange and interesting, I still want to take pictures of it.

You can go to a play that is enjoyable because it's funny, and then on the next night you can go to a play that's enjoyable because it's 'disturbing.'

I told myself, 'When I grow up, I want to make pictures that can inspire and nourish people.' Immediately, when I was 10, I started photographing nature. I built a darkroom. My first really good darkroom, not just down in the cellar, was when I was 14.