In the year 2000 a close friend and I drove from Massachusetts to Utah. I decided to bring a camera along, mainly just to create a visual record of the places we would visit and the things we would see. It was a cheap film camera. I think I had packed six or seven rolls of film. After only a day or two on the road all of the rolls were spent. I was taking pictures of everything. Most were shots of the changing landscape rolling by, taken through a cloudy passenger window. I knew nothing about exposure, light, or depth of field. None of that mattered to me then. I was just reacting to the things I saw that interested me. I had become obsessed with the act of taking a picture.
Soon after we returned - with triple the number of film rolls I started with - I met my wife. She had been studying photography in college. She taught me a lot of the technical aspects, which I surely needed. More importantly, though, she made me aware of the great visual and emotional magnitude of photography. In addition to creating something that is visually interesting, it allows us to speak and influence any number of feelings. It's an essential way for us, as people, to communicate. You can get as much information and feeling from a photograph as you can a written story or verbal conversation. There is incredible potential there.