Quotes: Edward Weston (From "Seeing Photographically" In The Book Classic Essays on Photography)

"By varying the position of his camera, his camera angle, or the focal length of his lens, the photographer can achieve an infinite number of varied compositions with a single, stationary subject. By changing the light on the subject, or by suing a color filter, any or all of the values in the subject can be altered. by varying the length of exposure, the kind of emulsion, the method of developing, the photographer can vary the registering of relative values in the negative. And the relative value as registered in the negative can be further modified by allowing more and or less light to affect certain parts of the image in the printing. This, within the limits of his medium, without resorting to any method of control that is not photographic (i.e., of an optical or chemical nature), he photographer can depart from the literal recording to whatever extent he chooses.

This very richness of control facilities often acts as a barrier to creative work. The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them, and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

Only long experience will enable the photographer to subordinate technical considerations to pictorial aims, but that can be made immeasurably easier by selecting the simplest possible equipment and procedures and staying with them. Learning to see in terms of field of one lens, the scale of one film and one paper, will accomplish a deal more than gathering a smattering of knowledge about several different sets of tools.

The photographer must learn from the outset to regard his process as a whole. He should be concerned with the right exposure, the perfect negative. Such notions are mere products of advertising mythology. Rather he must learn the kind of negative necessary to produces a given kind of print, and then the kind of exposure and development necessary to produce that negative. When he knows how these needs are fulfilled for one kind of print, he must learn how to wary the process for other kinds of prints......."

"Good composition is only the strongest way of seeing the subject. It cannot be taught because, like all creative effort it is a matter of personal growth."

"In common with other artists the photographer wants his finished print to convey to others his own response to his subject. In the fulfillment of this aim, his greatest asset is the directness of the process he employs. But this advantage can only be retained if he simplifies his equipment and technic to the minimum necessary, and keeps his approach from from all formula, art-dogma, rules and taboos. Only then can he be free to put his photographic sight to use in discovering and revealing the nature of the  world he lives in."

Here is a longer version of the Edwards Essay:

http://www.jnevins.com/westonreading.htm