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

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

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

The class that I teach is called "The Life of a Photograph." It takes up the question, of the billion photographs that were taken today, how many will have a life, and why? So the new reality has made the question more pertinent, not less pertinent.

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.

The thing with my workshops is, photography is a thoughtful process. In an atmosphere of fast photography, and generally thoughtless, quick, automatic photography, I think that there is an interest in the slowed down, thoughtful approach.

My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.