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Sam Abell Biography

Sam Abell (born 1945 in Sylvania, Ohio) is an American photographer known for his frequent publication of photographs in National Geographic. He first worked for National Geographic in 1967, and is one of the more overtly artistic photographers among his magazine peers.[citation needed] Sam Abell's style of photography is documentary in the sense that his major avenue, the National Geographic magazine, is a publication of record. However, his best work is known for its transcendent qualities, starting at the documentary level yet open to interpretation on an aesthetic level. One of his favorite photographs (based on how often he mentions it when asked about his work) is of the tree viewed through a Japanese window, which graces the cover of his book Seeing Gardens. It's a documentary photograph of a tree, but due to a combination of light and Abell's inclusion in his composition of roof tiles in the background, the photograph takes on the transcendent, illusory quality of a stained glass window. Abell rarely uses flash, preferring a pure relationship with light. He has said that he could be perfectly happy with his photography even if his only subject was light itself.

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Sam Abell Quotes

Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

Competitive, Editorial, Editorials, Energetic, Photography, Visually

. . . just like some people's instinct to photograph is triggered by vacation. . . assignments might be that to me and that's why I've built my life around assignments. That was the way to live the photographic life.

Built, Instinct, Live, People, Vacation, Way To Live

[ My time and our common culture] it's what I'm photographing, and I'm very involved with that.

Common, Culture, Involved, My Time, Time

Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.

Assurance, Learning, Photographer, Photography, Scenes, Vivid

The neatest part of this book I'm working on - to me - are the pictures that show the process. . . Because photographers. . . think things through and. . . it isn't luck, and it isn't random and it isn't accidental. It isn't.

Accidental, Book, Luck, Things, Thinking, Working

My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.

Lenses, Lighting, Mean, Photography, Priorities, Steady

The class that I teach is called "The Life of a Photograph. " It takes up the question, of the billion photographs that were taken today, how many will have a life, and why? So the new reality has made the question more pertinent, not less pertinent.

Class, Pertinent, Photograph, Question, Reality, Taken

My Dad took a workshop from a photographer who worked at the Toledo Blade, a newspaper I delivered. I knew this photographer's work. My Dad took a night class from him at the University of Toledo. Without that class, I wouldn't have become a photographer, because my Dad came home and taught me what he learned in class.

Blade, Dad, Home, Night, Toledo

The unusual wins out over the usual.

Unusual, Usual, Winning, Wins

I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.

Book, Creation, Place, Stories, Thinking, Thought

It's a little bit like talking about the life of writing. The life of writing may be about many things, but it always begins with the writer. With the kernel of an idea, or a character, or an idea or a theme, or even an outcome. But for documentary photographers, photographs begin at that intersection of the real world and the imaginative inner world.

Begin, Character, Documentary, Life, Real, Writing

Even though I teach with 35mm, my method takes people by surprise, because it isn't fast, and it isn't about hardware or software, or even great results. It's about great process.

Hardware, People, Process, Software, Surprise, Teach

I would like to go to Antarctica. That's about all.

Antarctica, Like

And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.

Capture, Photography, Seldom, Strong, Take, Thinking

I will just say, appropriation is an intellectual idea until it happens to you. It's a philosophy, and it's got its own intellectual framework. Then there's what happens when it's your photograph. Then it's personal, and that's all I'll say.

Ideas, Intellectual, Philosophy, Photograph, Say

Typically I see it with photographers who go to a place like India or Nepal, and everything's so colorful and exotic and they think, therefore, a picture's been taken.

India, Nepal, Photographers, Taken, Thinking, Typically

Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest - a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.

Distant, Expression, Horizon, Light, Single

'Woman on the Plaza,' with its distinct horizon, snow-like surfaces, wintry wall, stunning sunlight, sharp shadows, and hurrying figure, would become the most biographical of my photographs - an abstract image of the landscape and life of northern Ohio where I grew up and first practiced photography.

Figure, Ohio, Photographs, Photography, Wall, Woman

For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.

Affection, Alaska, Australia, Japan, Nothing

In the last workshop I taught, a woman flew in from Thailand. She's a medical doctor in Bangkok. I asked her in her one-on-one session where she wanted photography to be in her life. Did she want a second career? Was it about earning money? Or was it art? And she said "None of those. I want photography to be serious in my life. " It would be like someone wanting music, like piano playing, to be a richer, deeper, and maybe even harder experience.

Art, Careers, Like, Medical, Photography, Thailand

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