When I go up, especially if I'm paying for a small helicopter and pilot, I'm on. I've got an hour and a half and the clock is ticking and it's costly and I enter into a super-heightened state of mind.

I come at a subject from a profoundly photographic level. I am not interested in pictures that ultimately don't work as pictures.

I am a photographer who likes to make images, but I also want to get a sense and understanding of images that have already been made. I don't fabricate worlds; I pay attention to the things that already surround us.

I'm attracted to the garden, without a doubt, but I always try and image the wolf that's there, too. And that wolf would be us. It's not that we're malevolent or evil - we're marvelous, fantastic, tool-bearing beings and capable of so much - but there are so many of us, and we don't tend to take responsibility for what we do.

I was flying planes before I was driving cars. I started gliding when I was fourteen, about when I started photographing. I was a geeky kid, and the camera was a way in high school for me to have some power. Flying was, too, I guess.

I realized that if I wanted to truly talk about vastness and the sublime and scale and the West - recurrent themes in my overall work - I needed to engage with the vast ocean that is Los Angeles.

I struggle against photography. I struggle against the fact that it is silent, that it is just a piece of paper on the wall, often presented in a tedious white matt frame.