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

There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn't good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.

A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

There are grander and more sublime landscapes - to me. There are more compelling cultures. But what appeals to me about central Montana is that the combination of landscape and lifestyle is the most compelling I've seen on this earth. Small mountain ranges and open prairie, and different weather, different light, all within a 360-degree view.

I think that it's workshops, honestly, that have kept me keen about photography, and about my photography. My career as a workshop photographer came while I was at the Geographic in the late 70's, and has continued consistently since then.

I was giving a lecture and I said, that's enough about The Photographic Life, meaning my biography, now let's talk about the life of a photograph. And in that one instant I got the title for a potential next book.

I did a story for the Geographic on Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and Stephen Ambrose was the writer. He said, "I've got the easiest job in the world. I just have to re-tell the story of the greatest fishing, camping, hunting, canoeing trip of all time. You, Sam, have the hardest job, which is, pretend like nothing has happened in the last 200 years.