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.

I remembered seeing it and it was this metallic turbine and I thought it was beautiful. I had never been in a power plant before, but I felt, without being overly dramatic, compelled to make photographs of this for myself.

So to me it's very similar in terms of trying to distill within the image, those elements that are gonna form, hopefully, a compelling visual statement.

The first day at the power plant I found myself photographing some steam vents on the roof of the structure. And I remember consciously thinking that they were just like trees but they were metal.

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.

There is a considerable amount of manipulation in the printmaking from the straight photograph to the finished print. If I do my job correctly that shouldn't be visible at all, it should be transparent.

Many photographers are consumed with the idea of making beautiful contact sheets. I am far more interested in making the best final print I can.