"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."
"I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term - meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster."
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Source: A Personal Credo. Essay by Ansel Adams (1943), first published in American Annual of Photography, 1944; later published in Photographers on Photography edited by Nathan Lyons, 1966, and in Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present edited by Vicki Goldberg, 1988.
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