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.
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.
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.
There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn’t good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.
Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment – this very moment – to stay.
For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.
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.
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.
Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.
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.
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.
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.
A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
When I first went to ‘National Geographic,’ I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.
I had luck, but I worked hard and I suffered. It’s not just photography I’m talking about. It’s about whatever dream you want it to be.
The unusual wins out over the usual.
The best lesson I was given is that all of life teaches, especially if we have that expectation.
In almost every photograph I have ever made, there is something I would do to complete it. I take that to be the spirit hole or the deliberate mistake that’s in a Navajo rug to not be godlike, but to be human.