I now want to be a photographer of my time, and our common culture.

Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

My father taught me photography. It was his hobby, and we had a small darkroom in the fruit cellar of our basement. It was the kind of makeshift darkroom that was only dark at night.

[ My time and our common culture] it's what I'm photographing, and I'm very involved with that.

That statement [ Stephen Ambrose:'You, Sam, have the hardest job, which is, pretend like nothing has happened in the last 200 years.'] woke me up to the fact that the landscape that Lewis and Clark came across was greater than the Serengeti. And it's gone.

That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called "Your photographs: Better."

I would like to go to Antarctica. That's about all.