On Waiting for Light

Most photographs are made in the ten minutes when nothing appears to be happening.

The lake at Banff is still at first light. Not calm — still. There is a difference, and the camera knows it.

I have learned to arrive an hour early and leave the tripod in the car. The first frames are always wrong; they are the frames of someone who is still thinking about the road.

What remains, when the thinking stops, is usually the photograph.