Sharp and Keen Eye

He was drawn to the everyday, boring, and the banal– and wanted to show the inherent beauty of things that we often overlook.

“He is the freest person I’ve ever met—he just does what he wants.

I think the most important quality that a street photographer should have is a sharp and keen eye. It doesn’t matter how technically proficient you are or how expensive your camera is. Without having a sharp and inquisitive eye– you will never make an interesting photograph.

“It’s like chopping down a huge tree of immense girth. You won’t accomplish it with one swing of your axe. If you keep chopping away at it, though, and do not let up, eventually, whether it wants to or not, it will suddenly topple down…But if the woodcutter stopped after one or two strokes of his axe to ask, “Why doesn’t this tree fall?” and after three or four more strokes stopped again, “Why doesn’t this tree fall?” he would never succeed in felling the tree. It is no different from someone who is practicing the Way” – Zen Master Hakuin

“Without instruction, at a very early age, I could play the piano. Anything, particularly—after hearing it once. Not reading music. I would pass a quite fine piano in my house everytime we came from the back from the front—and everytime I would pass it I would play a few things, and without any success at all. And I got a little better and better, and time went on. And maybe never playing the same one twice. It aint much different the way I work today, still [in photography].”

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