I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been.

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.

It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.

go in over your head, not just up to your neck.

To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.

When you are doing a lot of hard fast field work, it's a physical necessity to forget every day. You can't try to remember it in any continuity. You get so burdened if you try to do it the other way. You can't dictate to your material... We found our way in, slid in on the edges. We used our hunches. And it was hard, hard living.

Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.