It’s Not About the F-Stop

Avoiding Perfection

For a large part of my life I avoided photographing nature. I was, after all, a Brooklyn boy, and it wasn’t until I was 19 or 20 that I saw trees that weren’t planted in a row. It was a great revelation to me. I had literally never noticed sunrises or sunsets. I liked fog. Fog had mystery, intimacy. But when I began to travel to the country, I was blown away with what happened, and it happened without a person or building in sight.

I knew nothing of Thoreau. Walden Pond was not in my consciousness. I was delighted with all these new experiences.

I photographed nature for about 20 years. There were a number of reasons why it lost its appeal to me. One was that, after a while, all nature pictures, mine included, started to look ...