Galen Rowell Quotes

• You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either.

  Galen Rowell

  Inspirational, Photography, Nature

  185 Copy quote

• I began to realize that the camera sees the world differently than the human eye and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Powerful, Eye

  40 Copy quote

• When the magic hour arrives, my thoughts center on light rather than on the landscape. I search for perfect light, then hunt for something earthbound to match with it.

  Galen Rowell

  Light, Perfect, Magic

  29 Copy quote

• The most interesting parts of the natural world are the edges, places where ocean meets land, meadow meets forest, timberline touches the heights.

  Galen Rowell

  Ocean, Land, Interesting

  18 Copy quote

• At the heart of all photography is an urge to express our deepest personal feelings - to reveal our inner, hidden selves, to unlock the artist. Those of us who become photographers are never satisfied with just looking at someone else's expression of something that is dear to us. We must produce our own images, instead of buying postcards and photo books. We seek to make our own statements of individuality.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Book, Heart

  33 Copy quote

• When I go to the mountains, I intuitively know my place in the world much better through these experiences. The more intense they are, the better I know myself, and the more I am able to challenge myself.

  Galen Rowell

  Climbing, Challenges, Mountain

  23 Copy quote

• Memory selects single important images, just as the camera does. In that manner both are able to isolate the highest moments of living.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Memories, Important

  20 Copy quote

• I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a 'record shot'. My first thought is always of light.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Mean, Thinking

  27 Copy quote

• One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it...If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Real, Mistake

  17 Copy quote

• I find it some of the hardest photography and the most challenging photography I've ever done. It's a real challenge to work with the natural features and the natural light.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Real, Light

  24 Copy quote

• My first thought is always of light.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Light, Firsts

  10 Copy quote

• Often when I walked alone in the mountains, I tried to make sense out of the two halves of my life. What went on in the city during the week seemed chaotic and unrelated to the events in my mountain world.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Cities, Two

  18 Copy quote

• And most of my early pictures failed but about one in a 100 somehow looked better than what I saw.

  Galen Rowell

  Saws, Photographer

  13 Copy quote

• My advice for climbers or photographers is to really tune into your own passions and not just what other people are doing or aren't doing. Figure out what works for you, what turns you on, what gives you the greatest amount of energy and feeling of satisfaction.

  Galen Rowell

  Passion, Climbing, People

  15 Copy quote

• Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, American West, People

  53 Copy quote

• I think that cognitive scientists would support the view that our visual system does not directly represent what is out there in the world and that our brain constructs a lot of the imagery that we believe we are seeing.

  Galen Rowell

  Believe, Thinking, Artist

  45 Copy quote

• My interest in photography did not begin with books or mentors, or with any burning desire to see the world through a camera. It evolved from an intense devotion to mountains and wilderness that eventually shaped all the parts of my life and brought them together.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Book, Mountain

  9 Copy quote

• The landscape is like being there with a powerful personality and I'm searching for just the right angles to make that portrait come across as meaningfully as possible.

  Galen Rowell

  Powerful, Artist, Personality

  15 Copy quote

• A lot of people think that when you have grand scenery, such as you have in Yosemite, that photography must be easy.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Thinking, People

  16 Copy quote

• Theres no question that photographs communicate more instantly and powerfully than words do, but if you want to communicate a complex concept clearly, you need words, too.

  Galen Rowell

  Artist, Talking, Needs

  11 Copy quote

• There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Environmental, Roles

  11 Copy quote

• I began taking pictures in the natural world to be able to show people what I was experiencing when I climbed and explored in Yosemite in the High Sierra.

  Galen Rowell

  Artist, People, Yosemite

  16 Copy quote

• Small, portable digital cameras that exceed the performance of an off-the-shelf Nikon using 35mm slide film are further away from current reality than the proposed NASA manned Mars mission, although I expect both to happen sometime during my lifetime.

  Galen Rowell

  Reality, Mars, Nikon

  9 Copy quote

• My mountaineering skills are not important to my best photographs, but they do add a component to my work that is definitely a bit different than that of most photographers.

  Galen Rowell

  Artist, Skills, Important

  21 Copy quote

• I like to feel that all my best photographs had strong personal visions and that a photograph that doesn't have a personal vision or doesn't communicate emotion fails.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Strong, Vision

  16 Copy quote

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