When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.

The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.

As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.

A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.

I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.

I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.