The desire to see for the sake of seeing is with most people the only…

…--- a view may include any number of interesting facts, may constitute a whole catalog of important and pretty items, and so be valuable as a view or as a record; but it would utterly fails as a pictorial composition.

The composition may be ever so carefully worked out, but it must appear unconsciously done. And so it will be best in most cases to depart slightly from precise and symmetrical arrangement, as though unintentionally, lest the endeavor to …

In selecting our subject…there are two factors which it should be borne in mind are essential, and these are Expression and Composition

…we might now formulate a maxim to the effect that art -- that is, in our case, pictorial representation --- employs the image of concrete things to create abstract ideas.

…the strongest part of a picture is the sensation and the feeling which it creates, this being done through the agency of certain familiar objects more or less accurately depicted and represented with more or less completeness. The MOTIVE, …

Hence SELECTION in photography, or at least in landscape and some other branches of work, often takes the place of what in painting becomes voluntary COMPOSITION.