Ansel Adams Quotes

Often times, I'm surprised by what I'm writing or what I'm playing, and then that inspires me to keep going with it, so it ends up being a very adventurous process.

Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do - that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.

The way I photograph... in many ways it's directed by chance and all my mistakes, which are often the best stuff. I found that no matter if it's the same tape, the same TV, and the same camera, I can never duplicate an image... your arm jiggles, there's just too much chance. And I never put it on pause, or use any of that fancy equipment.

I go into the whole composer thing quite open to keep on going and keep on trying different things because you never know... the next idea you have might be the one.

You can't stumble upon something new and wonderful if you don't have time to stumble.

My photography is the result of being there at the right moment.

Virtually always I get my best pictures when everybody thinks the shoot's done.

It's good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that's better than you'd imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn't be as much fun.

My work is on the one hand laboured, and on the other completely happenstance and intuitive.

Certain things you have to stumble on to. They can't be preprogrammed.

In using chance operations, the mind is enriched.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

What's so great about inspiration is sometimes it finds you when you're not looking.

I just keep recording. You never know what you'll come up with.

I spent a lot of time on recce. It is a kind of creative chaos, but I like the sense of creative serendipity.

All the films that I did, I didn't plan them. They just came to me.

The thing that makes writing so difficult is you don't have the element of serendipity. At least with a photograph, you can set up the camera, and something might happen. You might be a lousy photographer, but you can get a good picture if you just take enough of them.

Play is experimenting with chance.

Do as many ideas as possible. The right idea will pick you.

When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do not know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does. Each photograph that works is a revelation to its supposed creator.

I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.

When you start a new project, no matter if it's a movie like Enigma or an album like Goddess, you are always learning something. While I search, I find something new.

I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says, I'm here! and I say, Yes, I see you. I hear you.

Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity, and when you're photographing children there's often an abundance of it. I would have an idea of what a photograph would look like and then something would happen - a dog might lumber in and become a critical element. I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance.