My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.
It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.
Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.
That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called "Your photographs: Better."
Essentially what photography is is life lit up.
We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make.
"You know you are seeing such a photograph if you say to yourself, "I could have taken that picture. I've seen such a scene before, but never like that." It is the kind of photography that relies for its strengths not on special equipment or effects but on the intensity of the photographer's seeing. It is the kind of photography in which the raw materials-light, space, and shape-are arranged in a meaningful and even universal way that gives grace to ordinary objects."
What I'm interested in is modern American history. I'm taken with the changes that have occurred in America in my lifetime.
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.
But there is more to a fine photograph than information. We are also seeking to present an image that arouses the curiosity of the viewer or that, best of all, provokes the viewer to think-to ask a question or simply to gaze in thoughtful wonder. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to pick up your own camera again and go to work.
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.
This might seem off the track, but an interesting thing to me that others could talk about better than I, but one of the growth areas in photographic education has been the so-called slow photography.
Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
How the visual world appears is important to me. I'm always aware of the light. I'm always aware of what I would call the 'deep composition.' Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it's an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.
One of the things that I most believe in is the compose and wait philosophy of photography. It’s a very satisfying, almost spiritual way to photograph. Life isn't’ knocking you around, life isn't controlling you. You have picked your place, you’ve picked your scene, you’ve picked your light, you’ve done all the decision making and you are waiting for the moment to come to you.
Exotic novelty. My statement to [people] is always, well, set this picture in your home town, is it still an interesting picture? Or is it just exotic? Would I care about this same picture minus its exoticism?
I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.
A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
There isn't an aspect of book creation I don't enjoy, and there has always been a book in my life to dream about or work on.
Increasingly, it's people not interested in National Geographic.
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.
People say to me, "Who's your favorite kind of photographer?" Or "Who would be your favorite photographer to have in a workshop?" And I always say, "My Dad."
I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.
...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.
My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.
