Daily Inspiration Quote by John Sexton

It sounds like shop talk, but it doubles as a quiet manifesto about attention. Sexton describes a ritual familiar to large-format photographers: you’re under the focusing cloth, sealed off with the ground glass, composing inside a private, inverted world. Then you break the spell and “peek out” to check what the frame is excluding. That movement, in and out, is the point. It’s not indecision; it’s discipline. He’s naming the moment when craft becomes ethics: the responsibility to notice what your chosen viewpoint erases.

The line’s power is its plainness. “Frequently,” “some times,” “just” - the language refuses grand theory even as it reveals one. Sexton isn’t chasing spontaneity; he’s practicing a kind of humility. By admitting that the camera’s frame can seduce you into tunnel vision, he exposes how easy it is to mistake a compelling composition for a complete truth. The “edges of the frame that I’m not seeing” are both literal (the unseen periphery beyond the ground glass) and metaphorical (context, consequence, the stuff that complicates a clean image).

As an educator steeped in the Ansel Adams lineage, Sexton’s comment also signals a pedagogy: slow down, verify, re-choose. Moving the camera position is not just technical optimization; it’s an acknowledgment that meaning changes with vantage. In a culture addicted to instant capture, this is a small, stubborn argument for deliberateness - and for remembering that every picture is a decision about what the world gets to be.