I had the benefit of coming along at a time when the field was really wide-open. Though there are many opportunities that you have now as a photographer, there was a less pressure when I first started. I hit New York and came under the tutelage and guidance of a lot of really good established shooters and editors. It was a kind of atmosphere that if you made a mistake, it wasn't a disaster, it was a learning experience, you got back in the saddle the next day and you went out and you shot again.

I was doing a portfolio for Sports Illustrated a couple years ago, and I ended up having to shoot a picture in three parts and have the magazine put it together back at the shop because I missed my connection in Salt Lake City. It's the practical aspect of being a photographer. I couldn’t get to the location early enough because I missed my flight because of a plane delay, and that put me back on my heels and the shot that I had imagined that I could do in one piece, went out the window and I had to go into [when I teach classes I always call it] triage-mode. What do you have to do to save this patient? You walk in and that picture is dying on the table. What do you do to resuscitate it?

I've done highly technical stories about science and space. To do that, you need to have a fair amount of imagination, and then sometimes that imagination leads you to a solution. Because what you're doing is trying to take a concept or an idea, or some sort of scientific theorem, something that most people are not going to have an immediate understanding about, and translate that into a photograph that's going to grab somebody. You have to imagine yourself in the reader's seat. I always view the reader as who I serve.

I'm not serving my ego, I'm not serving even the magazine – I mean, obviously, I am. But at the end of the day, if you've been able to move the reader, the consumer of your picture, then you've done a good job.

I always quote Jay Maisel, who's a good friend and wonderful teacher. He'll look at somebody and say, "I don't think you cared about shooting this picture because you're not making me care about it when I look at it." That's a pretty pungent criticism and it's also very accurate. You've got to pursue pictures out there. Great pictures, or even really good pictures, don't drop from trees. They're sometimes a product of a lot of hard work, a lot of tenacity, a lot of problem solving, and then that final fill-up of good luck or good fortune. That's the guy behind the curtain stuff and readers don't want to see that. They want to look at a picture and view it as effortless, like, wow, that's really cool. That's what the viewer’s first reaction should be. It shouldn't be like, oh, this must have been a lot of work.

I went to school to be a writer. My books and the blog have enabled me to re-embrace that art form. I really have a good time doing that because I enjoy writing. If truth be told, I enjoy it almost as much as I do photography. You sit down and plan to write the story of what just happened to you in the field, and it's inevitably kind of ridiculous, humorous, and mildly compelling, because it’s the stuff that happens to a photographer in the field.

I enjoy the coupling of shooting for clients and teaching. I shoot when I teach and people in a class expect you to produce something that's really worthwhile as you demonstrate. I’m shooting live so it's up on the screen in front of 300 to 400 people. That's what I do all the time. Other photographers have come up to me and said, "Man, I can't believe you do that. I would never let them videotape me live. I would have it rehearsed; I'd have it in the can." I just accept that kind of pressure, it’s part and parcel of being an assignment photographer. I always caution people that we're going to make a series of mistakes and find our path through our mistakes; I'm very unabashed about that. I make mistakes all the time and that is a very valid way to approach any location scenario.

Your digital contact sheet shows your thought process, from the first frame where you're just doing location assessment and following that through, it's your thought process right there. When I came up photographically, really good photo editors couldn't care less about your portfolio, you know, your greatest hits. They were like yeah, sure kid, yeah that's nice, but let me see your contact sheets.

Your contact sheets are the roadmap for what you're thinking when you have a camera in your hand. If you go through a digital take when you are building a solution, lighting or whatever, you go back through that and you’ll see the photograph build. You see frames where you misfired, frames where things were off, and then finally, usually through this process, you establish what I refer to as clarity of thought.

Does it have glitches, ups and downs, misfires, and stuff like that? Of course, every camera and every system does, and I think that that's where some folks get a little frustrated. I always remind people that it's a TTL system, Through The Lens, so when you point the lens at something, all that exposure information is streaming into the camera. You shift your angle, change your lens, you're going to get a different stream of photo information or exposure information, which is going to send a different message to your flash.

Therefore, the flash will react in a way that it thinks is appropriate but it might be way off and you say hey, wait a minute, it was fine a minute ago. Then you start to identify situations where TTL is going to not work so well, and other situations you walk in and see immediately that this is tailor-made for TTL.

When I was a staff photographer at Life Magazine, it was an interesting and blessed position. I really had kind of a benevolent patron who would listen to my ideas and fund them if the editors found them worthwhile. Now, so much of that is back on the photographer's shoulders, finding funding, going forward, and generating ideas. It's pretty madcap in lots of ways, the whole idea of trying to make a living as a photographer now is a high wire act. Tenacity is a huge part of the equation as well as the ability to maintain good humor and a positive outlook despite the fact that you're hearing the word "no" a great deal.

You have to be able to keep moving forward and you have to keep apprised of new technology. To have a market presence as a photographer, a blog, or certainly a web site, is required. It’s a way of communicating and letting people know that you're out there.