Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

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.

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.

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

It's hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.

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