[The small camera] taught me energy and decisiveness and immediacy ... The large camera taught me reverence, patience, and meditation.

We think of photography as pictures. And it is. But I think of photography as ideas. And do the pictures sustain your ideas or are they just good pictures? I want to have an experience in the world that is a deepening experience, that makes me feel alive and awake and conscious.

I have to say, taking photographs is such an instantaneous act. The recognition and the acting on the recognition, depending on your equipment, is close to instantaneous.

It comes down to risk, again and again. If you risk coming out, if you risk making pictures that aren’t good, you might discover something in a photograph that is the key. The very doorway to your own interest.

You look at it [a photograph] and all around the real world is humming, buzzing and moving, and yet in this little frame there is stillness that looks like the world. That connection, that collision, that interfacing, is one of the most astonishing things we can experience.

A lot of what I am looking for is a moment of astonishment, he says. Those moments of pure consciousness when you involuntarily inhale and say 'Wow!'

Making any statement of your feelings is risky. It's just like making pictures.