......so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.

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

Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.

I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without.

I find myself every so often looking at my ground glass as though the unrecorded image might escape me!

An excellent conception can be quite obscured by faulty technical execution or clarified by faultless technique.

...the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.