Freelancing in Somalia during their civil war and in Kuwait right after the first Bush War, I had some rather intense experiences that made life in the U.S. seem rather shallow and superfluous.

It is so much better to get the right exposure than to have to mess around later with Photoshop.

Pre-planning is essential. Research, research, research. If you are going to do a portrait, know as much as you can about the person beforehand. The web makes this very easy.

With the Internet, you can get lots of info in advance, but a local person who knows how to work the system is invaluable.

I fell in love with traveling and thought being a photographer would be an interesting way to travel and make a living.

Hot air balloons are terrific to shoot from, although they have become very expensive, as has most lodging and food in the Napa Valley.

The fact that a thirteen-year-old project still resonates and can still have a large exhibit with lots of newspaper, magazine and TV press shows the timelessness of the project.

I don't shoot many corporate or commercial jobs, but when you do, you had better have someone helping who has done it before.

My modus operandi after working for a decade as a self-funding freelancer, was to spend as little money as possible to get the job done, even if it was on someone else's nickel.

Everyone thinks it would be great to work for National Geographic. So did I.

The summer of 1966, I hitch-hiked alone for two months all over Europe instead of working on a farm in Spain. It was a big game to see how much I could see on $400. This got me hooked on traveling.

There's nothing better than a good, blind referee.

I don't care who you are, everyone has been through it - that feeling where you'd like to be someone else.

The presidents against Congress, the Senate is against the House, people are against politicians, and I'm against cats in the house.

There's so many different ways humans have used music to express the spiritual part of our nature and to connect us with the divine. So for me the pathway is through music.

Tolerance should really only be a passing attitude: it should lead to appreciation. To tolerate is to offend.

Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself; it is not MY pain.

I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life.

The best answer to the problem of evil is not one so much found on paper but on wood.

Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things.

The more information that's out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn't what's scarce; it's the willingness to do something with it.