When The Light Is Right And Everything

We Mountaineers Always Live With The Feeling That We Came On The Scene Too Late.

At The Heart Of All Photography Is An Urge To Express Our Deepest Personal Feelings - To Reveal Our Inner, Hidden Selves, To Unlock The Artist. Those Of Us Who Become Photographers Are Never Satisfied With Just Looking At Someone Else's Expression Of Something That Is Dear To Us. We Must Produce Our Own Images, Instead Of Buying Postcards And Photo Books. We Seek To Make Our Own Statements Of Individuality.

My Interest In Photography Did Not Begin With Books Or Mentors, Or With Any Burning Desire To See The World Through A Camera. It Evolved From An Intense Devotion To Mountains And Wilderness That Eventually Shaped All The Parts Of My Life And Brought Them Together.

When The Light Is Right And Everything Is Working For Me, I Feel As Tense As When Making A Difficult Maneuver High On A Mountain. A Minute - And Sometimes Mere Seconds - Can Make The Difference Between A Superb Image And A Mundane One.

One Of The Biggest Mistakes A Photographer Can Make Is To Look At The Real World And Cling To The Vain Hope That Next Time His Film Will Somehow Bear A Closer Resemblance To It...if We Limit Our Vision To The Real World, We Will Forever Be Fighting On The Minus Side Of Things, Working Only Too Make Our Photographs Equal To What We See Out There, But No Better.