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When The Light Is Right And Everything Is Working For Me, I Feel As Tense As When Making A Difficult Maneuver High On A Mountain. A Minute - And Sometimes Mere Seconds - Can Make The Difference Between A Superb Image And A Mundane One.

-Galen Rowell

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When The Light Is

Galen Rowell

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When The Light Is Right And Everything Is Working For Me, I Feel As Tense As When Making A Difficult Maneuver High On A Mountain. A Minute - And Sometimes Mere Seconds - Can Make The Difference Between A Superb Image And A Mundane One.

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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.

Memory Selects Single Important Images, Just As The Camera Does. In That Manner Both Are Able To Isolate The Highest Moments Of Living.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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