When the object that is produced...the photographic image...has the ability to make tears come to your eyes; to inspire you to the point where you have to catch your breath, then nothing else matters.

Having photographed the landscape for a number of years and specifically working with trees and in the forest I found, without consciously thinking about it, that it was a great learning experience for me in terms of organizing elements.

And friends of mine that had photography class in high school would develop the film and make prints and I'd take them back to the track and give 'em away or try and sell them. Much to my parents' dismay, I majored in photography in college.

You can also see sometimes that the best pictures are the ones where you didn't try so hard, where you were just enjoying the process - and you didn't even know why you were making the picture. It felt right. If someone asked, 'Why are you making this picture?' you probably couldn't describe it very well - and that's why it needs to be a photograph.

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.