MORE PHOTO QUESTIONS: What photographers do I like, and who do I emulate? I like a lot, most of whom — like Ansel Adams — I have better sense than to try emulating. I guess William Eggleston — some photos here — was something of an influence. And Walker Evans, with whom I share a strong interest in signs. But they’ve influenced a lot of people, mostly to better effect than me, I suspect. But I kind of see things the way they do, anyway.

Evans’ best work, in my opinion, was with James Agee in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Not something I’d care to try to emulate, though, and certainly not something I’d succeed in emulating if I tried, any more than I’d succeed in emulating Agee’s prose skills. As a great philosopher once said, a man’s gotta know his limitations.