How Do You Make People Want to Look War in the Face? | Big Think

I believe in the power of images. I think I wouldn't be a photographer if I didn't believe in the power of images. I think there's an immediacy to an image that obviously text or writing doesn't have. They both are incredibly powerful tools, but they hit you at different moments.

So an image that can speak to people really can bring them to that place or transport them to that moment of pain or that moment of urgency, or whatever that emotion is I'm trying to convey in that image. I think that an image has the ability to take the viewer there immediately.

Sometimes I feel like a hunter; like I feel like I walk into a scene and I kind of the first thing I do is look at the light. I figure out where is the light interesting? Where is the light source and where is it falling? And then I look at the expressions on people and their faces, and I'm trying to think about what is the story I'm trying to tell or what is the story that's being conveyed to me?

And then I have to look for details. I'm looking for sort of anything that might be interesting or might sort of convey a message. I often kind of circle around that scene several times. So I'll look at it from the front, from the side, from the back. I'll go around it a few times and see how the light changes, if it's backlit, if I'm shooting straight on.

And then often I'll shoot the hell out of it. I mean I'll shoot it every which way I can. I'm kind of very unconventional on how I learned to compose pictures. It was really trial and error. So for me, I'm often trying to fit a certain amount of information into a frame. I'm trying to tell a story with each picture.

So that has a lot to do with how I compose a picture. And then I'm trying to make it beautiful. Even if it's a horrible scene, I'm trying to sort of bring the viewer in and make them interested. So I don't want to take something and make it so horrendous or capture it in such a way that the first thing they do is turn the page. I want to engage the viewer.