As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.

A very big part of the life of a photograph is the afterlife.

We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make.

Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.

Yes, there are billions more photographers, and billions more photographs every day, but who's building up a point of view? Who's photographing with intention, and whose body of work will sustain itself and survive?

In the last workshop I taught, a woman flew in from Thailand. She's a medical doctor in Bangkok. I asked her in her one-on-one session where she wanted photography to be in her life.Did she want a second career? Was it about earning money? Or was it art? And she said "None of those. I want photography to be serious in my life." It would be like someone wanting music, like piano playing, to be a richer, deeper, and maybe even harder experience.

The neatest part of this book I'm working on - to me - are the pictures that show the process... Because photographers... think things through and... it isn't luck, and it isn't random and it isn't accidental. It isn't.