It has been a project of love... nobody asked me to do it. Nobody paid me for doing it.
I fell in love with an idea. Then, I merely wanted to do well what my inclination and training led me to do. I assumed that somehow some good might come of it. I had no idea what.
Making money was never my intention. Now don't get me wrong, I like money just like the next person. But what I really wanted was that somewhere down the road I'd be able to say that I was really good at one thing.
It took me twenty-five years and now I feel that I am.
To be freelance without any commercial instincts it is necessary to believe, to know, to know profoundly, that you are going to be all right - however unlikely it seems at any particular distressing moment. This faith no one can give you: it is something you have to discover in yourself.
I had been brought up to worry, but the lesson seems somehow not to have taken. I never gave a thought to what would happen after my money had run out.
If I could have taken a stranger career path than photographing Japanese gardens for most of my life I don't know what it could have been. The Japanese figure I can't possibly understand it, the Americans can't understand what all the fuss is about.
But I knew right away that I liked photographing in a foreign country where the language was not my own. I was forced into myself in a special way.
I went to Kyoto and I was quite simply amazed. Each year I would return like an explorer returning from a long journey: exuberant, ardent, filled with the wonders I had seen.
Each photograph only approximates the power of being there.
Still... those first few years... there were a hundred times when I wanted to throw the damn camera out the window. I didn't know much about who I was then. I was dependent on other people for an idea of my own worth - then I was in trouble.
All of my photography is in the service of understanding my personal experience.
My work is just another expression of my growth as a person.
Photography dissolves all sense of time, and all awareness of the other parts of my life. In retrospective, though never at the time, it feels like profound happiness.
You always have this hope that today I"m going to do something I've never done before.
Success is not just about talent. You have to be good, but there are a lot of good ones out there. Develop your own style, something uniquely yours and you might be around for a while.
Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.
Ideas come out of an intense desire for them.
To photograph well you have to become the center of the universe.
Be sure you're not completely wrong, then go ahead.
Great art doesn't necessarily come from great people. You don't want to meet the artist.
The photographic part is simple enough to learn. Figuring out where to stand... that's the hard part.
If I can get the composition right the drama will take care of itself.
Composition? The photographer William Eggleston is the best. It took me 25 years to appreciate just how good.
Making a photograph is like putting together a jig saw puzzle. All of the pieces have to fit.
Three thousand piece puzzles interest me more than three hundred piece ones. I strive for a complicated simplicity.
A good photograph requires as much planning as a crime.
I only make one negative of each scene. If I need to take two - or three - or four - it just means I'm not sure.
I'll often spend hours, days, working out the composition of an image only to suddenly realize that there is nothing to connect me to it. I just take it on the chin and move on.
When my head and my heart aren't connected it just looks like painted scenery.
Photographs tend to show more than they can explain.
It takes time to turn emotion into thought.
A photograph is an arrangement of shapes in the same way that an engine is an arrangement of parts: the only question worth asking is whether it works.
Just concentrate on not making the lazy move.
Don't understand me too quickly.
I have no interest in documentation. I want to make it my own.
I keep telling myself, "Get closer! What are you afraid of?"
The camera isn't a weapon. I don't 'shoot' anything. Why do people insist on using that word for making a photograph? Shooting is a an act of violence. My photograph is a caress.
The last thing that goes through my mind before I trip the shutter? "Could another photographer be standing in this same place, making this same picture." Yes, means I haven't worked hard enough.
It's a lot easier to talk about it than it is to do it.
When I'm working well I can see the complete, finished photograph in my head before I make it. I don't have to wait and see the negative to know whether I got it right... or wrong. I know.
You want to learn how to photograph the landscape? Learn how to photograph a face. If you can understand the composition of a face... trees are easy.
I think that photography is all about intimacy. Fearing intimacy, many photographers use the camera to hide behind.
The way I figure it there is a simple, fundamental difference in how Japanese and Americans view each other. We assume that they are fairly predictable, but impossible to understand. They assume we are fairly easy to understand, but totally unpredictable. There's a lot of truth to that.
I don't care what kind of film you use; black and white or color, 35 mm or large format, analog or digital. It's an irrelevant subject that has little to do with making good photographs.
If I were to say in the photography world that there was one person who I used as a springboard for ideas and a resource to learn from it was Joel Meyerowitz.
Never allow yourself to be undervalued.
My most important tool - a stopwatch.
Exposures can last up to thirty minutes - thirty minutes of moments all layered on one sheet of film.
I have no interest in a decisive moment. I want to extend that moment for as long as possible. Incredible things happen.
Sometimes people walk through the frame during the exposure. A few seconds I don't mind. In a twenty minute exposure they don't leave a mark. But, if they stop... I stop the exposure... wait until they move on... then continue where I left off. I've had a hundred people walk through an image I was making. You sweat when you photograph this way.
I can't wait to see what kind of photographs I'll be making when I'm 80.
Good photographers don't make bad pictures. But they make a lot of lazy ones.
The 8X20 camera suits me perfectly. I like how it extends what my eyes are capable of seeing; wide angle, but in proper perspective. Now, a square format seems so limiting.
It's that large viewing screen that I like. Sure I could do the same thing with an 8X10 masked off to 4X10. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper, easier to carry around and the dimensions would be the same.
But I wouldn't see as well.
Using a tripod will improve your pictures more than anything else. I hear complaints, "It's too heavy to carry around!" If you're worried about your convenience you're bound to be a hack.
All the talk about the longevity, "archivalness", of color prints can get a bit ridiculous. You buy a new couch for $3500.00 and it lasts for ten years, you'll think you got your moneys worth. And you worry that my $3500.00 print will last a 100 years? (it will if it is displayed properly)
I give thanks every day that I took the hard road.
Large color sheet film is pretty expensive. I don't waste a lot. But I do have to keep pushing myself - to take risks, not play it safe and not be cheap.
I have found that the ones that can talk the most about cameras, lens, films and processes are usually the weakest photographers.
A lot of times what is in my head doesn't get on to the film. I'm getting better.
I'm attracted to strong vertical lines in a composition, something to force the eyes to move around, make them a little uncomfortable. Then I spend most of the time on the edges.
I don't necessarily like working in the early morning and late afternoon light. I have nothing against beautiful light, it's just that it comes and goes too quickly and I work too slowly. Give me overcast skies and I can work smoothly and calmly all day long.
I have to be as open to it as possible - the more open the more vulnerable. I've gotten better at handling the fear.
I try to keep it simple; one camera, one lens, one film, only one f-stop (I kind of like F:128). I don't want to think out there, only feel.
The ones you didn't get right are the ones you dream about.
Some times there is just too much to look at.
I've gotten lucky pretty damned late but I had decided that even if nothing happened I was going to continue. I had to because when I saw what was said to be the great photographers of our time, I couldn't believe it, it sickened me. I knew there had to be more than that, even if it was for an audience of one: me.
I intend to change everything.
Never give up - there's always another move.
In the end, as in all things, luck trumps talent.
Life is immense.