What's really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer. ↗
I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. ↗
Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in. ↗
When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days. ↗