My Best Work Is Often Almost Unconscious

The Class That I Teach Is Called "the Life Of A Photograph." It Takes Up The Question, Of The Billion Photographs That Were Taken Today, How Many Will Have A Life, And Why? So The New Reality Has Made The Question More Pertinent, Not Less Pertinent.

In Almost Every Photograph I Have Ever Made, There Is Something I Would Do To Complete It. I Take That To Be The Spirit Hole Or The Deliberate Mistake That's In A Navajo Rug To Not Be Godlike, But To Be Human.

I Have This Awareness That The More Dynamic The Situation Is, The More On Guard I Need To Be That The Dynamic Isn't Controlling The Situation. I Found That Myself In The Galapagos. For The First Time In My Life I Was Around Very Exotic Animals, Colorful, Beautiful, And Immediately Present, All Around. Birds, Turtles, Iguanas, Seals. I Was Being Seduced By Their Exoticism, I Was Taking Pictures.the Pictures Weren't Well Lit, There Was No Moment In Play, There Was No Depth To The Pictures. I Was Just Gawking With My Camera At Something I'd Never Seen Before.

That Statement [ Stephen Ambrose:'you, Sam, Have The Hardest Job, Which Is, Pretend Like Nothing Has Happened In The Last 200 Years.'] Woke Me Up To The Fact That The Landscape That Lewis And Clark Came Across Was Greater Than The Serengeti. And It's Gone.

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.