In a photograph a person’s eyes tell much, sometimes they tell all.

Yes, I sold buttons to earn living. But I took pictures to keep on living. Pictures are my life – as necessary as eating or breathing.

With photography, everything is in the eye and these days I feel young photographers are missing the point a bit. People always ask about cameras but it doesn't matter what camera you have. You can have the most modern camera in the world but if you don't have an eye, the camera is worthless. Young people know more about modern cameras and lighting than I do. When I started out in photography I didn't own an exposure meter - I couldn't , they didn't exist! I had to guess.

It's important to understand it's OK to control the subject. If most editorial stories were photographed just as they are, editors would end up throwing most in the waste basket. You have to work hard at making an editorial picture. You need to re-stage things, rearrange things so that they work for the story, with truth and without lying.

Another picture I hope to be remembered by is this one of the drum major rehearsing at the University of Michigan. It was early in this morning, and I saw a little boy running after him, all the faculty children in the playing field ran after the boy, and I ran after them. This is a completely spontaneous, unstaged picture.

All photographers have to do, is find and catch the story-telling moment.

I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.