If you want to be a photographer, first leave home.
I strive for individual pictures that will burn in people’s memories.
If you wait, people will forget your camera, and the soul will drift up into view.
Most of my photos are grounded in people, I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a persons face.
My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.
What matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling.
A picture can express a universal humanism, or simply reveal a delicate and poignant truth by exposing a slice of life that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
The definition of a great picture is one that stays with you, one that you can’t forget. It doesn’t have to be technically good at all.
Some of the great pictures happen along the journey and not necessarily at your destination.
The photograph is an undeniably powerful medium. Free from the constraints of language, and harnessing the unique qualities of a single moment frozen in time.
It’s important for you to spend your time photographing things that matter to you. You need to understand the things that have meaning to you, and not what others think is important for you.
In our contemporary society, one so over-inundated with imagery, it is easy to overlook the power of a single frame to change the way we look at the world, or rally disparate hearts to a single cause. Yet, ours is a society shaped by this very phenomenon.
I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really believe in.
We photographers say that we take a picture, and in a certain sense, that is true. We take something from people’s lives, but in doing so we tell their story.
Unconsciously, I think I watch for a look, an expression, features or nostalgia that can summarize or more accurately reveal life.
What is important to my work is the individual picture. I photograph stories on assignment, and of course they have to be put together coherently. But what matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling.