The combination of pictures and words together can be really effective, and I began to realise in my career that unless I wrote my own words, then my message was diluted.
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