People say to me, "Who's your favorite kind of photographer?" Or "Who would be your favorite photographer to have in a workshop?" And I always say, "My Dad."

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

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.

Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest - a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.

A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.

For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.

Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.

I would describe a hero as a person who has no fear of life, who can face life squarely.

As long as I can reach somebody, then I feel like I'm doing my job.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

If thou would'st have that stream of hard-earn'd knowledge, of Wisdom heaven-born, remain sweet running waters, thou should'st not leave it to become a stagnant pond.

In a collective society, everybody's business is everybody's business.

Great, it passes on (in constant flow).

Immature strategy is the cause of grief.

My job as an artist, as I see it, is to understand and in some cases to take on various ways of thinking about people and the world that are different from my own, sometimes radically different.