...just like some people's instinct to photograph is triggered by vacation... assignments might be that to me and that's why I've built my life around assignments. That was the way to live the photographic life.

I have this awareness that the more dynamic the situation is, the more on guard I need to be that the dynamic isn't controlling the situation. I found that myself in the Galapagos. For the first time in my life I was around very exotic animals, colorful, beautiful, and immediately present, all around. Birds, turtles, iguanas, seals. I was being seduced by their exoticism, I was taking pictures.The pictures weren't well lit, there was no moment in play, there was no depth to the pictures. I was just gawking with my camera at something I'd never seen before.

I had a book come out several years ago, when there were no blogs. This is a mark to me about how the environment has changed.

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

I'm very involved in photographing America now, so I don't think of faraway places, as I did when I was young.

What I'm interested in is modern American history. I'm taken with the changes that have occurred in America in my lifetime.

Yes, there are billions more photographers, and billions more photographs every day, but who's building up a point of view? Who's photographing with intention, and whose body of work will sustain itself and survive?