At big holidays my grandfather used to take a family portrait before dinner, while the food got cold.
I learnt photography at an art school – the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – not at journalism school. The journalism is self-taught.
My first assignment for Reuters was to cover the start of the Boston Marathon. I didn’t own much camera gear, and those were film days, so I probably only got three frames of the start, but the next day I had the front of The New York Times sports section, six columns across and below the banner. I’ve covered another 20 Boston Marathons since then, using ever more sophisticated equipment, and I have never had play like that since.
I most like the variety of my assignments. I’ve gone from quiet mornings on a river doing a feature about an Olympic rower, to hiking a golf course photographing the British Open, to the pressure cooker of being part of the Reuters team covering the Olympic Games, to travelling with a U.S. presidential candidate.
My career started in the days when there was one "THE picture" from an event, since the number of prints you could make and transmit was very limited. Now there is room for so much more variety, which allows me to shoot with a more expansive point of view (without missing THE key moments, of course).
I try to make photographs for as many audiences as possible now.
For me, working as a photojournalist is not only a job or vocation, it’s an avocation
Documentary photographers such as Walker Evans, Eugene Richards, Bill Burke and Susan Meiselas gave me my first exposure to photojournalism.
Among current working photographers, I respect those whose pictures are the most thoughtful and who attempt to do something more than merely record a moment.
