Thank you Philip, I’m honored to be here.

Someone asked me the other day if I was a news photographer or a documentary photographer. I told them I do both. But in reality, the lines between the different genres are blurred and there is quite a bit of crossover.

I learned photography before the age of specialization. There were different areas of study but the end result and goal was to be a photographer.

Today, photographers often label themselves as 'this kind of photographer' or 'that kind of a photographer', a 'street photographer' for example. I try not to set those kinds of limitations on what I do photographically but I do enjoy documenting life. That documentation may end up on a news site or as a more in-depth study.

To answer your question though - yes, I think it is as obvious as it sounds. The definition of 'document' - "material that provides information or evidence or that serves as a record”, would define the genre pretty well.

That is a very long story, and actually in one of my books, but I’ll try and condense it for your readers.

A friend of mine from the U.S. and I got into a conversation about the destruction of the African elephants resulting from the illegal ivory trade. In the course of this discussion, I told him I believed that elephant abuse in Asia was just as serious a threat to elephant survival in the wild as the ivory trade.

This led to much research and I traveled to several of Thailand’s elephant camps. I spent time with people who are rescuing elephants and making a difference, and I also visited those who were abusing the elephants to make a profit.

The image you speak of was made at the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Camp, in Chiang Rai. I spent several days at this location, documenting their efforts to help elephants.

The area that the elephants lived in was by the river and in the early mornings there is often a dense fog in the area. The combination of fog and early morning light made for some very memorable images. The elephant in the photo is actually just having some natural breakfast and was not agitated at all.

Yes, elephants are amazing animals.

I was first introduced to elephants right after high school. I took a job at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. One of my duties was to help with the elephant rides and to assist the elephant trainer.

I got to know Kimba, our elephant, fairly well. I came to understand how intelligent and social the elephants are. I also made best friends with a huge Siberian tiger. That is another story for another day.

So when I got the opportunity to go and study the plight of the elephant in Thailand, I felt very comfortable around them. I also think that all of the attention the elephants are getting today by activists and other concerned people will have a trickle-down effect and help all wildlife.

People are beginning to realize that humans and the animal kingdom are not as different as once was believed.

Attitudes in this regard have evolved, especially in The West. We once believed that when you held an animal in esteem, the thing to do was capture it and keep it in a cage so others could appreciate it.

This attitude is changing and most now believe that animals need to be free, to be truly happy. In Thailand elephants are a very complicated issue. Not so long ago, elephants were simply regarded as beasts of burden and were used and abused horrifically in the logging industry. In addition, ivory is a Thai Buddhist symbol and is used in many temples.

When the logging industry was banned from using elephants due to public outcry, it left the animals and their mahouts without work - and the now domesticated elephants could not return to the wild. This gave rise to elephants and mahouts moving to the cities and begging for food - and also gave rise to the multi-million dollar elephant tourist industry.

This is the current problem, elephants, especially the babies are worth a lot of money. The networks used to capture and break baby elephants have become part of the culture in poor rural areas in Thailand and Myanmar. And at the top of the food chain, people make millions of baht.

So we have the religious issue, the tourism issue and the money issue all making this a complicated and difficult area to address.

My job was with the Public Affairs Office (PAO)

I was hired initially as the webmaster for the Multi-National Corps Iraq website, however it did not take the army long to recognize my talent behind the lens and I was used as the Command PAO photographer.

I was assigned to cover all the important events that took place at headquarters. I covered Presidential, and Vice- Presidential visits, and other visiting VIPs such as Stephen Colbert in Iraq.

I also got to do some of my own work such as a project I called “Warrior Portraits”. This work led to a friendship with some British soldiers.

Eventually the Imperial War Museum in London discovered this project and I was asked to display my work in the museum itself. Being the only American ever be asked to display images at the Imperial War Museum is a great honor and one of which I am very grateful.

Yes indeed, that in itself is a great story - how I ended up on a small, remote, top-secret military base in the Pacific Ocean for three years. It all happened because of a friendship cultivated in Boulder, Colorado.

I worked at The University of Colorado for a few years before I made the move to doing photography full-time. When I did make the move from keeping a “day job” to doing nothing but photography, I became a wedding photographer in Colorado Springs, photographing weddings in a “documentary style” - something that was new at the time.

After a few years, my best friend from the Boulder days, Steve Cummings, called me and asked me if I wanted to move to Kwajalein. Like you, I had never heard of it, and had to look it up in a world atlas. After some thought, I accepted. I have always been an adventurer at heart and this seemed like the ultimate adventure.

I can’t talk about my day job, but there was plenty of free time and since many areas on Kwajalein were classified, I took up underwater photography, and taught photography and Photoshop to the residents. I also worked as a photographer for the local newspaper.

Kwajalein was fairly close to areas like Bali where I went three times on R&R. It was on these trips I started to develop my style of people-centered documentary, or street photography. It was here I learned to overcome any fear of approaching people and took an interest in photographing a unique culture.

It is interesting that after I was on Kwajalein for a couple of months, I learned I had been selected by Fujifilm Pro as one of the best wedding photographers for 2005. Had this honor came a few months earlier would I have gone to Kwajalein? I honestly don’t know.

In Colorado I did mostly landscape, and later on the wedding photography as I mentioned.

In 1983 I took a workshop with John Sexton, the long time personal assistant to Ansel Adams. This workshop changed my photography and my life. I fell in love with black and white at this workshop, promptly purchased a Wista 4X5 view camera and started traveling the southwest in my spare time making black and white large format photos.

I thought at that time I had some sort of a personal problem, because I was totally into photography. Every day I would photograph, every night I was in the darkroom. I thought this behavior might be a little strange. In John, I found an artist that was exactly the same. He lived photography, every waking hour was spent doing something that had to do with photography.

And his mentor Ansel Adams, I was told, was also a person that was also totally absorbed in photography. I had found other people who were as obsessed with photography and this gave me the courage to accept my own behavior. I became ok with my passion and this is important for an artist.

Yes there was such a moment. It was around 1972. I had purchased a used camera. It was a poor mans SLR. A Ricoh SLR that used a 126 film cartridge. I spent a few weeks photographing “things”. Trying to tell a story, but not knowing how.

I was walking home late one evening and spotted a fire at a warehouse a hundred yards from where I was walking. Fire engines showed up and as they were preparing their hoses, my uncle, a captain in the CSFD, arrived by car, as he had gotten word of the fire while he was having dinner a couple of blocks away.

My uncle, who was the senior firefighter at the scene took charge and started shouting orders. I heard him tell a couple of men on a hose that he was going to kick the door in and to be sure to hit the fire with water when the large flame exploded through the doorway as it was going to, because he was giving it oxygen.

I raised the camera and my timing was perfect, my uncle’s foot still in the air after kicking in the metal door, his hands shielding his eyes and a huge ball of flame leaping through the opening.

That photograph allowed me to realize that an image could tell a powerful story. The first one was luck, and it would take many years before that sort of timing would become second nature, but I will never forget that moment.

One thing I have learned is that people in those situations want to have their story told. I mean we all want our story told to some degree, I readily accepted your invitation and most people would like others to know what they are going through in life, good or bad. And yes, people do get my juices flowing.

There may be some sort of political or natural event that causes the situation but it is the people that are affected by it I’m interested in. For me it is all about people. Even the elephant story is really a people story. The images you speak of are what the people were going through on that day. I tried very hard to tell their story and I think some of the images of people in the police van show the sadness and anxiety of the situation. In those situations I also try hard to relate.

It is very easy to stand three feet from that van and imagine how it could easily be me in the van instead of outside with a camera. That kind of empathy is transmitted to the subject, and they understand my camera is telling their story with compassion.

Gosh your taxing an old man’s memory, but yes, I think so. I also think it is fairly recent and I always like to give experiences and images time before I make that sort of statement.

It was powerful and it is the kind of thing I like to do. I always hope my camera can make some sort of difference. I hope my images can affect people in such a way that they feel compassion. If I can add the smallest amount of compassion to the world through my work with a camera, I will be a happy man.

Thank you so much, they are indeed two of the most beautiful people in the world, both inside and out. But no, Jang is not an overly huge “fan” of my work, but she does totally support my work, just as she would support anything I do and I in turn totally support anything she does. I think that it is important in a relationship.

We love each other because of who we are not because of what we do as a profession. However I must say it is because of Jang I get some of my best images. For example while I was shooting the Cambodian situation, Jang called me to the van and “said you need to make photos here”.

I made the decision to live in Thailand before I met Jang, and the plan was to live in Bangkok. After I met Jang we weighed the alternatives of country vs city life and It just made more sense as a family to live in Nakhon Nayok.

Both Jang and Gammy live close to relatives (a few hundred yards) and I think it is better in the long run for Gammy to have siblings and friends close by.

I haven’t had a Thai student yet, although I think that would be great, and am really looking forward to it. My students come from surprisingly diverse locations.

The main workshop I do is four hours. It is mostly street photography, and from 6 AM until 10 AM is about as far as we can stretch the “good light” and our energy in the heat. The whole teaching and learning experience is tailored to the individual, so locations can vary and also what is taught.

Each student has their own set of skills and their own goals as far as where they want to go with photography and what they want to learn. I find by tutoring individuals I can teach much more and much faster than if I were in a classroom.

The thing about a classroom is you go as fast as the slowest student, which is good for the slowest student, but not as good for the advanced student. In a one on one situation, I can ask the all-important questions: “What do you want to learn, Where are you now, and where do want photography to take you?”

You are correct about the ten attempts. Like anything in life, if you want to be good at something do it a lot - and don’t be afraid of the mistakes. Learn from them. If there is a secret, it is emotion. After you have all the basics of the camera and light down, start feeling.

A great photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, said, “I cannot teach people photography”. And, yet even in his day, cameras were fairly easy to learn. What he meant was that a good photograph comes from the heart. He could not teach people how to feel.

Robert Capa said, “If your photographs are not good enough you are not close enough” I interpret that to mean you are not involved enough. This can apply to any type of photography; if you see a scene of a temple or a breathtaking landscape and it hits an emotional chord, and you say “wow!” it is going to be a much better photo than if you said “oh, that’s nice.

And in people work, if you feel like crying, or laughing and sometimes do, your images will reflect that, so get involved emotionally.

Bresson also said, and I paraphrase, “photographs come from the heart, the brain gets in the way”. So, don’t overthink when you shoot, but do care about your subject.

I have shot in many places, and yes Thailand is on the top of the list. There are many reasons. The atmosphere is wonderful and there is such a variety of locations.

As I have mentioned throughout this chat, for me it is the people. The Thai people are friendly and go out of their way to make you feel comfortable.

I have friends that shoot in western countries and sometimes get hostile reactions when shooting strangers on the street. In Thailand the most common response I get from a stranger when taking a photo of them is “Thank You”.

The Thai people I meet think it is a compliment that I want to take a photo of them. Does it get any better than that? There are so many wonderful places on earth where I want to make photos in the future, but yes, Thailand is a photographer's paradise.

Thank you Philip, I have enjoyed very much being here – and the seat is not that hot. ;)