When I make a photograph, it is an act of intimacy. My images come as the result of some quiet, sometimes instantaneous dialogue between me and my subject.
I have had the opportunity to take my camera into many different situations: from this beautiful Napa Valley to the plains of the Midwest to the subways of New York; from Chile to China, from Japan to the European continent, from Yosemite to the Hebredian Isles. No matter where I am, for me there is the magic of a shared moment with people in their own surroundings. Meeting with them in this way, my camera becomes the medium for interchange. There is no language barrier. Rather it is a mutual sharing of trust.
Whether on the Steppes of Inner Mongolia photographing a shepherd with his flock, or in the New York City Subways, photographing musicians, or in Cuba, where a young boy allows himself to gaze into my lens with his beautiful golden eyes, these meetings continue to pull at my imagination, and to be an inspiration, and a source of exhilaration.
I do not go out with my camera with some preconceived notion of what I should find. My eyes are opened before I am aware of what pulls me to make a photograph. Invariably, I am surprised. What brings me to make a photograph is a sense of place, mood, design, motion, light and color. No matter whether it is in a small detail or a broad sweep, in a direct glance or a discrete moment, those elements are integral to what I hope to communicate in my photography.