Maintaining the dignity of my subjects has grown to be, over the years, an imperative in my work, both in the taking of the pictures and in their presentation.

I just started taking pictures, and it was - it was an instant love affair. It was just ecstatic.

It's usually so fraught when you're taking a picture. I work with an 8-by-10 view camera and there's a, you know, hood that I put over my head, and it's tricky and complicated.

I was just taking pictures to see what they looked like. Just for the fun of it. It wasn't about anything in some cases. Some of them were just about the joy of opening up an aperture and seeing what shows up.

If I take enough pictures, I'm going to get a good one, and I know not to stop at a bad one.

To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about.