" how you build a picture, what a picture consists of, how shapes are related to each other, how spaces are filled, how the whole thing must have a kind of unity."
PAUL STRAND

Philosophical, lyrical, sometimes obscure commentaries on how photographs are made and what they mean are thick on the ground, usually by non-photographers. Not that there is anything at all wrong with the perceptive outsider's view; indeed, the distance of this kind of objectivity brings new, valuable insights. Roland Barthes even held his non-understanding of photographic processes ("I could not join the troupe of those who deal with Photography-according-to-the-Photographer") as an advantage in investigating the subject ("I resolved to start my inquiry with no more than a few photographs, the ones I was sure existed for me. Nothing to do with a corpus ").

This book, however, is intended to be different, to explore the actual process of taking photographs. I think I'd like to call it an insider's view, though that smacks of hubris, because I'm drawing on the experience of photographers, myself included, at the time of shooting. A great deal goes on in the process of making an exposure that is not at all obvious to someone else seeing the result later. This will never prevent art critics and historians from supplying their own interpretations, which may be extremely interesting but not necessarily have anything to do with the circumstances and intentions of the photographer. What I will attempt to...