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

My first thought is always of light.
Galen Rowell

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

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

The reason that I keep writing is that all my most powerful messages about the fates of wild places that I care about need to have words as well as images.
Galen Rowell

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

I began to realise that film 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

What I mean by photographing as a participant rather than observer is that I'm not only involved directly with some of the activities that I photograph, such as mountain climbing, but even when I'm not I have the philosophy that my mind and body are part of the natural world.
Galen Rowell