Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished 
product.
Every ten years a man should give himself a good kick in the pants.
A good daguerreotype was as perfect a kind of photograph as was ever made.
I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.
When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.
When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.