The first thing that I learned at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Cliff Eaton explained a photograph. He simply said, “If you look at a photograph, and theres a caption that says, “Grandfather teaching Grandchild how to catch a bass in the lake at sunset”, you don’t have a photograph.” If it requires that type of a caption, it’ll never fly.

I assisted Gene Smith, and while he was alive, other people captioned his work, but he never captioned them.

I’ve come to a point in my career, after being a working pro for over a half a century, where what I’d like to do is make photographs just for myself (That doesn’t mean if a client came along and wanted to pay me to do something, I may consider it… I’m certainly not independently wealthy).

I want to have fun. If you have a camera, thats what you should do, you should have fun with it. It shouldn’t be a chore, nor a hassle, it should just be fun. Life is too short to be grinding your teeth, cracking your knuckles and being a hard ass.

I’m going to die a sweetie, not a hard ass… I hope.

I asked Ansel Adams why he would spend a week, or more, making one photograph. I could just never understand that.

People ask me why I’m photographing hummingbirds. They’re in my backyard, they’re absolutely gorgeous, they’re faster than a Saturn 5B rocket and they only stay for a fleeting second. Its not like the Indy 500 where they go around for 5 hours. You get one shot every hour until the sun goes down, or the top of your head is burnt to a crisp

To all the ships at sea, for gods sake, have some fun.