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.

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.

That statement [ Stephen Ambrose:'You, Sam, have the hardest job, which is, pretend like nothing has happened in the last 200 years.'] woke me up to the fact that the landscape that Lewis and Clark came across was greater than the Serengeti. And it's gone.

Typically I see it with photographers who go to a place like India or Nepal, and everything's so colorful and exotic and they think, therefore, a picture's been taken.

...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.

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

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.