The fundamental issue is one of emphasis: you are not a photographer because you are interested in photography...The reason is that photography is only a tool, a vehicle, for expressing or transmitting a passion in something else. It is not the end result.

The most important piece of equipment after the camera is a good pair of shoes.

...one day I was speculating on how I would like to look back on life and I decided I wanted to feel that I was a photographer rather than a teacher. As simple as that.

This idea fascinates me. The idea that a few seconds of watching a photographer in action can tell you his/her status in the medium. And it's true. If you watch a photographer of merit working an event he/she does not look like an amateur.

The destination of the photograph is to reveal what something or somebody looked like, under a particular set of conditions, at a particular moment in time, and to transmit the results to others.

It is the purpose of life that each of us strives to become actually what he or she is potentially. Each photographer, then, should be obsessed with stretching towards that goal through an understanding of others and the world we inhabit. When that happens, the results, like photographs, are really the expressions of the life of the maker.

For me photography is an excuse to be nosy about things I want to know about.

These are the two basic controls at the photographer's command--positi on and timing--all others are extensions, peripheral ones, compared to them

I'm a photographer, obviously. My chosen tool for understanding life, and communicating the results of this search to others, is the camera.

My advice is: learn from the best or teach yourself. And do not bother at all if you do not have an exaggerated sense of curiosity.

Learn from the best the second raters have nothing to offer.

You are not a photographer because you are interested in photography.