To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

Now one does not think during creative work: any more than one thinks when driving a car. One has a background of years — learning — unlearning— success — failure — dreaming — thinking — experience — back it goes — farther back than one's ancestors: all this, — then the moment of creation, the focussing of all into the moment. So I can make — "without thought" — fifteen carefully-considered negatives one every fifteen minutes, — given material with as many possibilities.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

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

Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.

Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.