This profession [photography] is deserving of attention and respect equal to that accorded painting, literature, music and architecture.

In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular... sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.

The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet.

Photographers and artists contribute a lot to the world and have a right to exist in relative security and comfort.

The great rocks of Yosemite, expressing qualities of timeless yet intimate grandeur, are the most compelling formations of their kind. We should not casually pass them by, for they are the very heart of the earth speaking to us.

The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro.

We who are gathered here may represent a particular delete, not of money and power, but of concern for the earth for the earth's sake.