Only after I came to know the limits of the possible as expressed by these other visual artists, and had tested them by my own experimentation, was I able to evoke the style of photography that had been inside of me all along. I could see my way clear toward a career in which making money from commercial assignments was a less important goal than living a life in which the wholeness of knowing and communicating about the earth's wild places reigned supreme. I judged that Ansel Adams' emerging immortal greatness was at least as much due to his breadth as a human being--teacher, technician, innovator, environmentalist--as to his images themselves.
