The images I take generally are not a precise pictorial representation of what my eye see. They’re usually devoid of color for a start off and sometimes they’re even more abstract, hinting at but not fully describing the true nature of the landscape that I’m photographing. Steve Gosling (website)
As photographers, we do not just set out to “capture” an image on film. Rather, as Alfred Stieglitz said, we can use the medium to create an equivalent to the experience of what we see and feel when making a photograph. John Sexton, Listen to the Trees (Boston, 1994), 84.
Photography for me is a creative art. It is not simply an illustrative or interpretive medium.… I try, not always with success, to photograph only what stimulates a recognition of beauty, either that which is intrinsic in the objects of nature or is a manifestation of the wonderful relationships of things in the natural world. […]
My photographs are meditations on the light that illumines and transforms the ordinary, the often overlooked. There are those rare moments when the everyday reality of our world is transcended and one glimpses the eternal and infinite. Marion Patterson, Grains of Sand (Palo Alto, 2002), xi.
Trying to make photographs that can speak takes time. Seldom do I visit a place for the first time and immediately make photographs I find meaningful. Making repeated visits, I like to look and explore, observing the changing seasons and the transformations of nature, beginning to feel visual and spiritual connections. As valuable for me […]
Learning to accept what photographic opportunities are given is a hallmark of a seasoned photographer; you can’t force the light or the wind. Art Wolfe, “Introduction,” William Neill. Photographer — A Retrospective (2017), 3.
I was excited to see one of my photos on the cover of the latest volume of History and Technology. I also wrote a short reflection on the role of the photographer in shaping what we think is history. Fortunately, both the full-size image and the essay are freely available: “On the Cover.”