With the Internet, you can get lots of info in advance, but a local person who knows how to work the system is invaluable.

I sold all my medium format equipment in 2005 after Canon came out with the 12 megapixel EOS 1Ds.

Before digital, I spent thirty years shooting color transparencies, which are very unforgiving of exposure. A half stop can make or break a good photo on slide film.

We live in an idiotic capitalist self-indulgent society where the sex life of a pop star is more important than impending starvation, land mines and child soldiers in Africa, or more interesting than the world's biggest man-made natural disaster in oil fields of the Middle East.

Freelancing in Somalia during their civil war and in Kuwait right after the first Bush War, I had some rather intense experiences that made life in the U.S. seem rather shallow and superfluous.

Scientists are usually nice, organized, logical people who are very cooperative. I always learn a lot of science while shooting science stories and it helps to be able to speak intelligently to a subject about his or her field of work, i.e., do your homework before the photography.

As a senior in high school my counselor recommended that I soften my science and math direction with an art course. Fortunately my high school offered a new course in B&W photography, so I opted for that instead of art, towards which I had an aversion. Composition is something that comes pretty naturally to me and I appreciate ordered chaos: the photo class turned out to be fun.