[In the late 80's] that's the first time I heard about that astonishing idea [that most photographs would be taken on telephones]. And now I've been watching the tsunami of images.

There are a lot of ways to talk about the life of a photograph. You can talk about the afterlife of a photograph, and in the end I talk about that, with the Richard Prince picture. But mainly, what I dedicated the book to being about was how photographs begin their life, and where they begin it. And they begin it with the photographer's imagination and instinct and experience.

Though Geographic didn't publish that photo in the story that it was done for, "The Life of Charlie Russell," a cowboy artist in Montana. But later, maybe a year and a half ago, they named it one of the 50 greatest pictures ever made at National Geographic.

The longer we lived with it the more we wanted something less about process and more about life.

There are things that I teach, about building photographs, and that's why people come to my workshops. When people come to the workshops, they're consumed with seeking the subject, and I teach seeking the setting.

We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.