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The majority of photographers focus on the obvious. They believe and accept what their eyes tell them, and yet eyes know nothing.

Photography can be a deceitful, superficial medium that leads us into believing something even though we know it's not necessarily true. It lulls us into a false sense of complacency.

Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.

Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.

To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

What I mean by photographing as a participant rather than observer is that I'm not only involved directly with some of the activities that I photograph, such as mountain climbing, but even when I'm not I have the philosophy that my mind and body are part of the natural world.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.

What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion. Sometimes you feel blessed with curiosity, sometimes you feel cursed with it.

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.