I've found even after nearly 30 years of doing this, there are all kinds of new surprises that rear their heads at various times and I truly believe that 51% of the images, success takes place in the darkroom.

In my mind I needed a symbol of today's technology, and I realized that what I wanted to photograph was the Space Shuttle. And so that's where Places of Power came into being.

I took a workshop from him a few months after that. That experience changed my whole approach to photography. At that workshop in Yosemite in 1973 I decided I wanted to try and see if I could pursue this for myself, and I'm still trying.

When I teach and meet a class for the first time, you realize that there are people there that have exceptional abilities or have the potential to do exceptional things and you never know who those people are. My job is to provide the best information I can.

I think one of the aspects of photography that remains for me is I find the process still frustrating. The counter to that is that it's still very exciting. If you didn't have the frustration, you wouldn't have the excitement. If you didn't have the disappointment, you wouldn't have the magical intoxication of this process working.

Obviously, we can see what was in front of the camera, but if a photograph is honestly made, it's a bit of a self-portrait. I think it's impossible for a photographer who is working honestly to keep this from happening.

I've never seen a surface that I think is more seductive in image making.