I was raised a Catholic as a boy and went to a Catholic boys' high school, a private school, and kind of drifted away, candidly, in my latter teen years. I consider myself deeply spiritual but not in an institutional, religious kind of a way. In Catholicism, we're surrounded by these images of martyrdom and doing penance and doing some suffering to achieve what you're trying to achieve. And I certainly embedded that in my psyche and I have lived that very effectively.
James BalogGlacial pace is actually an incorrect concept. The glaciers move a lot faster and they react a lot faster than people imagine.
James BalogEarly in my career I discovered that there was something really special about photographing at night that places your mind on the surface of the planet. Youโre no longer just a human being walking around in the regular world. Youโre a human animal striding around on the surface of the planet thatโs out in the middle of the galaxy. We as a culture, weโre forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very deep connection and contact with nature. You canโt divorce civilization from nature. We totally depend on it.
James BalogI've got at least two major project ideas that I've been chewing on for several years in my head and I've been trying to resist them both. But I have learned over the years that when they don't go away and they're still in there, you probably have to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to do something about them.
James Balog