It takes practice to paint a realistic picture. It takes practice to play a guitar. It takes practice to capture the decisive moment with a camera. And just like with painting or guitar playing, while you can use almost any brush or guitar, it helps to have a good-quality sable brush for oil painting, an electric guitar for rock- n-roll, and a viewfinder camera for street photography.

I began street photography in the 1970s using an 8×10-inch Agfa-Ansco large-format camera. I would set my Majestic tripod up on a sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles and take formal photos of the street. Occasionally, I would ask someone to stop and allow me to make a portrait of them, other times I just photographed the ebb and flow of the city.