On Photographing Stillness

Most of what I do is wait. I'd like to say that less, because it sounds either lazy or affected, but it's the truth.

Photographs come from attention, and attention has its own time. I've learned to stop trying to rush it.

Stillness, in a session, isn't the absence of motion. It's a quality of presence — the moment a person stops performing and just is. You can feel it arrive. The shoulders drop a quarter inch. The breath gets longer. The face goes soft around the eyes.

That is the photograph. Everything before it is just the room warming up.