Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.
Ansel AdamsRead
The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The photograph's negative is like the score of music, while the final print is the performance, each unique in its expression.
Ansel Adams' quote draws an analogy between the photographic process and musical performance. The negative represents the original vision or potential of a photograph, akin to a composer's written score. The final print, like a live performance, showcases the artistic interpretation and subtleties that arise from the negative, emphasizing that every execution of an idea can yield different and unique results.
Themes
PhotographyArtPerformanceCreativityNegativeExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop about photography, one might quote Ansel Adams to illustrate the importance of both the negative and print.
More from Ansel Adams
All quotes βIt is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
Ansel AdamsRead
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
Ansel AdamsRead
With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.
Ansel AdamsRead
The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
Ansel AdamsRead
You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.
Ansel AdamsRead
Similar quotes
The audience will find the artist who matches their interests. If you're not being true to yourself, your audience can't find you, because there's a wall up between who you are and who they're seeing.
Hilary HahnRead
The thing to remember when you're writing," he said, " is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader. I don't care what literary device you might use, or belief systems you tap into--if you can make a story true for the reader, if you can give them a glimpse into another way of seeing the world, or another way that they can cope with their problems, then that story is a succes.
Charles De LintRead
People call things 'vulgar' when they are new to them. When they have become old, they become 'good taste.'
Mary QuantRead
No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?
C. Day LewisRead
If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.
Mary MccarthyRead
To finish is sadness to a writer β a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
John SteinbeckRead