There is some relation between the cost of taking a picture and the attention the photographer pays to the picture. With an 8x10 camera, simply because it costs, say, $35 or $40 for a sheet of film processing and the contact print, the picture is going to be well considered. Because the digital picture is free, what I find is a two-sided phenomenon. The positive side is that there’s less restraint and greater potential for spontaneity. The downside is that there’s more work that’s made that isn’t particularly considered at all. The camera itself doesn’t require that. However, if somebody wants to use the camera with very consciously directed attention, it does that too.

Your most iconic pictures were made with view cameras, either 4x5 or 8x10. Given what you just said, does it follow that those images were the only version of the shot?Yes, absolutely. And that’s where the economy came in. I realized that I couldn’t try to limit myself by only taking pictures that I knew beforehand were going to be good. Because then I would only take safe pictures, that way I wouldn’t learn anything. What’s the point? So the way I made this process that I loved financially feasible was to decide that I wasn’t going to take two of anything. I don’t mean not bracket, I mean exactly what you said—not even two views. What it forced me to do was to decide what I wanted.