Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.

The creative force in man recognizes and records these rhythms with the medium most suitable to him, the object, or the moment, feeling the cause, the life within the outer form. Recording unfelt facts, acquired by rule, results in sterile inventory. To see the Thing Itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism - the casual noting of the superficial phase, a transitory mood.

It seems so utterly naive that landscape - not that of the pictorial school - is not considered of "social significance" when it has a far more important bearing on the human race of a given locale than excrescences called cities.

Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed.

The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically — that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.

Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?

No photographer is better than the simplest of cameras