Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

It actually has transcended my career at the Geographic, so that when my career there ended, I had momentum as a teacher, and a belief in photographic education at the workshop level.

I'm interested in smokers standing on ledges, and big box stores, the rise of the suburbs, and the hollowing out of small towns. Self-storage. Things that didn't exist 50 years ago. Our common culture. What we have agreed is OK to live with.

Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest - a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.

It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.

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

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