I was born in Sylvania Ohio and I lived
there the first 18 years of my life the
Sylvania Ohio is one of the flattest
landscapes in North America its glacier
flatten landscape that flatness and that
distinct horizon is the most elemental
part of my photographs that is in almost
all of my photographs the background is
level horizontal and cleanly divides the
frame top to bottom and near to far I
find it in addition to being a graphic
element to be an optimistic or positive
element it’s a dynamic line that flat
horizontal line and the horizon to me
always meant possibilities
that’s just the frame or the theatrical
setting for the emotional content of my
photographs and I suppose if I wanted to
attach one word to the finished
photographs that I’ve produced that word
would be thoughtful that they’re
thoughtfully composed and they are to
some extent about thought as well my
early life as a photographer was dynamic
as a boy as a high school student I was
editor of the paper editor of the
yearbook editor of the yearbook and
college photographer always for those
publications and all of this led to me
being a summer intern at National
Geographic it never occurred to me that
all of that would drop away on
assignment it was a surprise to me to
find that the photographic life could be
and now was very lonely I had to pull
out of that on my own and I did and in
1974 I met my wife to be on the Pacific
Crest hiking trail and for 25 years we
traveled together and that was the end
of course of loneliness
one of the things that I most believe in
is the compose and weight philosophy of
photography it’s a very satisfying
almost spiritual way to photograph life
isn’t knocking you around life isn’t
controlling you you have picked your
place you’ve picked your scene you’ve
picked your light you’ve you’ve done all
the decision-making and you’re waiting
for the moment to come to you I was
looking for a cyclone to photograph and
I told the pilot I insisted
don’t let the cyclone overtake us we’re
out over water we won’t be able to get
back to land we’re off the north north
coast of Australia but I needed a
photograph of a cyclone for the story I
was working on the cyclone overtook us
we should have died on the spot and I
looked out and I saw a majestically
elementally beautiful this deadly storm
was and I pick up my camera and I took a
photograph out that empty door and I
took it as though it was a landscape in
Ohio there is the clean elegant line of
the horizon and the roiling boiling
cyclone above it and below the dangerous
sea dividing it all that optimistic
bright line of the horizon
I took the photograph for two reasons
one it settled me down to do it and the
second was it was beautiful and there
was a third reason and that is I knew
I’d never be back here and I knew that
maybe no photographer had ever seen this
and that’s documentary photography
that’s National Geographic photography
go to places where people haven’t been
before and then go further
sometimes dangerously so but often
meaningfully so because you’re very very
deep into life so close in it so far
into life that you’re close to death and
that picture conveys some of that life
and death beauty and danger
the truth about imagery is we are
drowning in an ocean of it every day the
more that photographs are quick cut the
more that video dominates that the quiet
picture the extremely dry and quiet
photograph has a greater chance of
lasting than a busy dynamic hectic
photograph my photographs were all often
criticized early in my career for being
too quiet but I thought to myself what’s
the opposite of quiet noisy still I took
the criticism seriously and I decided
that I needed to make quiet pictures
better more compelling and I believe
that I succeeded in doing that I had a
long career at National Geographic
taking quiet pictures
my dad developed the hobby of
photography at just the right time for
my life but we had a darkroom in the
basement of our house Sinhala fruit
cellar was one of those funky dark rooms
that was only dark at night you know it
was it wasn’t light tight unless it was
perfectly dark outside and he and I
would go out on photographic outings
together and he would tell me certain
things and it wasn’t until years later
that I found out a lot of what he was
telling me was on the little piece of
paper that came with every box of Kodak
film it was a very endearing teacher he
was a very quiet man from Kentucky and
he had a very gentle way of teaching you
couldn’t even call it teaching it was it
was sayings low-angle
full impact look for the s-curve and
compose and wait and they were so simple
that they stuck and so gentle that I
never took it to be teaching which I
might have recoiled from but then we
take the film home and we develop it in
the darkroom and he would stand at the
enlarger and I would stand beside him
shaking the pans of chemicals and
watching the image rise up magically
from the chemicals
my father and I talked in a way we
couldn’t talk any other time he was
beside me but we weren’t face to face we
were shoulder to shoulder and he was
working at the enlarger I was working at
the trays and I could ask him questions
about his life and about his feelings
and about his thoughts that I never
could have done never could have spoken
never could have asked in the daylight
when we would have had to have been
looking at each other
the only other example of this that I
know about it’s of two people sitting
side by side in a car in rural America
on a long road trip at night with only
the dashboard lit up and the two of you
talking that’s my dad and I in the dark
room and I’m so glad that it happened as
a person as a photographer as a son
there the first 18 years of my life the
Sylvania Ohio is one of the flattest
landscapes in North America its glacier
flatten landscape that flatness and that
distinct horizon is the most elemental
part of my photographs that is in almost
all of my photographs the background is
level horizontal and cleanly divides the
frame top to bottom and near to far I
find it in addition to being a graphic
element to be an optimistic or positive
element it’s a dynamic line that flat
horizontal line and the horizon to me
always meant possibilities
that’s just the frame or the theatrical
setting for the emotional content of my
photographs and I suppose if I wanted to
attach one word to the finished
photographs that I’ve produced that word
would be thoughtful that they’re
thoughtfully composed and they are to
some extent about thought as well my
early life as a photographer was dynamic
as a boy as a high school student I was
editor of the paper editor of the
yearbook editor of the yearbook and
college photographer always for those
publications and all of this led to me
being a summer intern at National
Geographic it never occurred to me that
all of that would drop away on
assignment it was a surprise to me to
find that the photographic life could be
and now was very lonely I had to pull
out of that on my own and I did and in
1974 I met my wife to be on the Pacific
Crest hiking trail and for 25 years we
traveled together and that was the end
of course of loneliness
one of the things that I most believe in
is the compose and weight philosophy of
photography it’s a very satisfying
almost spiritual way to photograph life
isn’t knocking you around life isn’t
controlling you you have picked your
place you’ve picked your scene you’ve
picked your light you’ve you’ve done all
the decision-making and you’re waiting
for the moment to come to you I was
looking for a cyclone to photograph and
I told the pilot I insisted
don’t let the cyclone overtake us we’re
out over water we won’t be able to get
back to land we’re off the north north
coast of Australia but I needed a
photograph of a cyclone for the story I
was working on the cyclone overtook us
we should have died on the spot and I
looked out and I saw a majestically
elementally beautiful this deadly storm
was and I pick up my camera and I took a
photograph out that empty door and I
took it as though it was a landscape in
Ohio there is the clean elegant line of
the horizon and the roiling boiling
cyclone above it and below the dangerous
sea dividing it all that optimistic
bright line of the horizon
I took the photograph for two reasons
one it settled me down to do it and the
second was it was beautiful and there
was a third reason and that is I knew
I’d never be back here and I knew that
maybe no photographer had ever seen this
and that’s documentary photography
that’s National Geographic photography
go to places where people haven’t been
before and then go further
sometimes dangerously so but often
meaningfully so because you’re very very
deep into life so close in it so far
into life that you’re close to death and
that picture conveys some of that life
and death beauty and danger
the truth about imagery is we are
drowning in an ocean of it every day the
more that photographs are quick cut the
more that video dominates that the quiet
picture the extremely dry and quiet
photograph has a greater chance of
lasting than a busy dynamic hectic
photograph my photographs were all often
criticized early in my career for being
too quiet but I thought to myself what’s
the opposite of quiet noisy still I took
the criticism seriously and I decided
that I needed to make quiet pictures
better more compelling and I believe
that I succeeded in doing that I had a
long career at National Geographic
taking quiet pictures
my dad developed the hobby of
photography at just the right time for
my life but we had a darkroom in the
basement of our house Sinhala fruit
cellar was one of those funky dark rooms
that was only dark at night you know it
was it wasn’t light tight unless it was
perfectly dark outside and he and I
would go out on photographic outings
together and he would tell me certain
things and it wasn’t until years later
that I found out a lot of what he was
telling me was on the little piece of
paper that came with every box of Kodak
film it was a very endearing teacher he
was a very quiet man from Kentucky and
he had a very gentle way of teaching you
couldn’t even call it teaching it was it
was sayings low-angle
full impact look for the s-curve and
compose and wait and they were so simple
that they stuck and so gentle that I
never took it to be teaching which I
might have recoiled from but then we
take the film home and we develop it in
the darkroom and he would stand at the
enlarger and I would stand beside him
shaking the pans of chemicals and
watching the image rise up magically
from the chemicals
my father and I talked in a way we
couldn’t talk any other time he was
beside me but we weren’t face to face we
were shoulder to shoulder and he was
working at the enlarger I was working at
the trays and I could ask him questions
about his life and about his feelings
and about his thoughts that I never
could have done never could have spoken
never could have asked in the daylight
when we would have had to have been
looking at each other
the only other example of this that I
know about it’s of two people sitting
side by side in a car in rural America
on a long road trip at night with only
the dashboard lit up and the two of you
talking that’s my dad and I in the dark
room and I’m so glad that it happened as
a person as a photographer as a son
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