A Different Approach
"Not knowing what you're going to shoot is the great adventure. If you go out knowing what you're going to shoot, the great adventure is gone. Most people work to have a plan; I've worked to not have a plan for shooting when I go out.

"I think when I was younger I was pretty much focused on what I wanted to do. As I got older I realized that sometimes the thing along the way is much better than the thing you set out to do; and part of the reason I figured that out was, I always took pictures for myself, and I would go out shooting on jobs and I would see that the things around the job, away from the job, were sometimes much more interesting and maybe even more applicable to the job than the things they sent me to shoot. So I just tried to keep as open as I could. And for me that became a mantra: keep as open as you can. If you are too focused on what you want to do, you're going to miss everything else along the way."

"I'd have a client and he'd say, 'I want a Jay Maisel picture.' Okay, that's carte blanche, right? So I do it, and he'd say, 'That's not exactly what I had in mind." Because what they want you to do is repeat yourself.

Applicable to the Job
"Here's the deal: in photography, in order to take a great picture, you've got to be a great photographer, or you've got to get very lucky. In commercial photography, which I really haven't done in 15 years, you have to have a great client. It doesn't matter if you're a great photographer; if you don't have a great client they're going to use the worst pictures they can find, or they're going to ask for the worst pictures they can find, and if you change their concept, they'll go up a wall because they had a concept. The fact that you come up with something better doesn't matter.

"I can tell you exactly the day I said I'm getting out of [the commercial] business. It was the day somebody said to me, 'I don't want it better, I want the layout.' We called it "Black Book" art direction—they would take a picture out of the Black Book and tell you to do it.